Masks – the same practical effect in practical situations as a lucky charm around the neck.
Inside a car, a normal “surgical” mask obviously does almost nothing. An FFP3 one should still be effective however.
The number one method of contamination is imported contamination. Nothing helps, if the virus keeps flowing in, it’s basic physics/mathematic.
It spreads between people, and via surfaces.
The one and only way to keep the virus under control is to restrict travelling, close the borders as done with great success in NZ and Aus.
True but it needs to be a country which very few people want to travel to 
And then when you do open up again, you need just 1 (one) person somewhere who has got it (or got it off a pack of imported frozen food) and it starts all over again…
It’s interesting to see the variation across the UK
Probably different organisation. Health is a devolved matter 
and this cuts both ways. It means every region has to organise it by themselves. They all got the same amount of vaccine, per population.
LeSving wrote:
The one and only way to keep the virus under control is to restrict travelling, close the borders as done with great success in NZ and Aus.
That’s not an option for e.g. the UK, where some 80% of our food is imported, a lot of it by lorry via Dover. (The more commonly quoted 50% excludes ‘UK produce’ such as tea, where the base ingredient is imported).
Peter wrote:
and via surfaces.
I think “via surfaces” is minuscule. The Isle of Man has not recorded a single case traced back to package handling – while borders were highly restricted as to who came in, packages (all with surfaces!) have been arriving in ever higher numbers due to the increase in online shopping and no one going away. All the logistics companies must have handled hundreds of thousands since COVID began. If spreading via surfaces/packages was a significant means of spread, we would have seen at least some cases that way. Yet every single case we’ve had has been human to human, from travellers coming in from elsewhere.
alioth wrote:
I think “via surfaces” is minuscule.
I think you are right. Contaminated surfaces are mostly irrelevant unless you touch them and touch your face straight afterwards. One of the benefits of wearing masks is that you cannot touch your face accidentally. So as long as you wear a mask, you can touch any surface you like (Covid-19, as well as most any infectious agent, cannot be transmitted through contact with intact skin), just make sure you wash/desinfect your hands before you remove your mask…
I think the “packages angle” is highly sensitive to the scenario.
For example, the IOM, Channel Islands, Scilly Isles get most of their food via sea, and by the time it gets there it’s been travelling for a while. Frozen food can preserve the virus but that goes via a longer route, due to the process involved. And a lot of people don’t eat frozen food; the trend nowadays is towards what I think is called “chilled” food which tastes much better and can go straight into the oven etc (but costs more, but people are generally getting richer, especially in these places ) Same with non-food packages, of which Amazon forms the majority; these are mostly cardboard which is bad for virus preservation, plus they spend 2-3 days travelling. Does Amazon even deliver to the Channel Islands?? Last time I checked they didn’t.
Also smart people are smart when it comes to handling food during preparation, and always have been. Is the IQ of these tax havens above average? Any bets?
The main “surfaces” risk would be the obvious one: door handles, petrol pump nozzles, pin pads, etc. There you get nice fresh virus, and with luck you get it from a few hundred people and all fresh from the same day And the best bit is that nobody will realise it happened because these people are the same ones who are “out and about” generally so if they catch it they will blame it on something else.
Obviously if the IOM gets its numbers way down, the “surfaces” risk will also be very low.
Malibuflyer wrote:
I’d always be very careful about such stories. Did they ask the virus and it said that it came from this very family? Didn’t this driver have any other human contact within the last 7 days? “Knowing” (with high probability) where one got infected is somehow possible when you have visited a super spreader event – but in normal life?
Well, the UK virus isn’t largely spread around here, hardly at all. That was the only point where he could be infected, in contact with several others carrying that particular virus. But you are right, there is a theoretical possibility he could be infected from, let’s say the neighbor’s cat, if that makes you feel better
Malibuflyer wrote:
If you beliefe masks are not at all effective just call the surgeon next time you have a surgery they don’t need to wear masks as you do not believe in these…
To this date there is no scientific evidence at all showing masks as an effective mean against Covid 19 among the general public. The whole concept is purely illusionary and based on the fact that medical personnel use masks to prevent being infected themselves and prevent them from infecting others. Two different concepts. The only things that scientifically have proven to work are distance and hygiene. The reason for that is distance and hygiene are simple measures that even idiots can do properly, masks are not, – not if your intention is NOT to get infected and NOT to infect others. Just touch the mask one single time, and you are done with. Looking at how the average person use the mask (half way on, constantly “correcting” it, taking it on and off and so on), the mask itself is a separate little epicenter all of it’s own. If everyone used masks the way masks are supposed to be used to prevent spreading of corona among the population, that is a different thing altogether.
A person who knows what he is doing may use a mask and positively prevent himself from being infected. Used by the general public however, it’s nothing but a measure that makes it 100% sure that everything you touch is contaminated by virus. If no one used masks, that percentage would be maybe only 1-10 % or something.
Malibuflyer wrote:
That is outright wrong: While obviously inflow from people who got infected elsewhere is a factor, the majority of infections happen domestically – it’s simple maths as there is (still) not enough travel to explain the majority of cases.
You obviously haven’t done the math then If no one travelled (across borders), there would be no spread of the virus except at the point of origin. If everyone travelled all the time, the virus would be everywhere at all times, until herd immunity started to be a factor everywhere. What is happening is something in between. The virus is kept under some control by various lockdown measures, and various traveling restrictions. NZ and Australia however, have taken a different course. They have closed the boarders 100% from contamination. The result is blindingly obvious. They also had a first wave, on a similar scale as Norway. They also managed to beat the virus, similar as Norway. But, what they did differently was to make sure not a single virus particle was to enter after thing had been cleaned up. What we did was to open up for everybody and everyone thinking it was over. So, gradually through summer and fall, imported virus spread among the younger generations doing nothing special, since they aren’t affected to any degree. Then in December – bang
Well, they are starting to patch up the obvious holes now. For instance at Gardermoen, corona tests are mandatory, yet only 50% choses to do these mandatory tests, and that is not a joke, it’s the fact. 50% chooses not to take the mandatory test Why even call it a mandatory test when it obviously isn’t? Stupid politicians at work.
DavidS wrote:
That’s not an option for e.g. the UK
Which is only an excuse for not doing anything. Either one does what the situation demands, or one left with the consequences. The thing is though, it’s the population at large who has to live with, and pay for, those consequences. And pay 10 folds in comparison. Either you grab the bull by the horns, or you don’t. There is no other options.
Peter wrote:
For example, the IOM, Channel Islands, Scilly Isles get most of their food via sea, and by the time it gets there it’s been travelling for a while.
Not dissimilar to most UK transit times. The ferry crossing is only 4 hours.
Most small packets arrive by air mail, and generally arrive as quickly as they do in the UK (generally, if I place an order with Farnell at lunchtime, if they use Royal Mail, it will leave Farnell around 5.30pm and show up with me the next morning). Amazon ship a tremendous amount of packages to the Isle of Man, much of them via the Isle of Man Post Office (air mail) and will arrive in under 24 hours from dispatch.
Australia and New Zealand, by virtue of their geography, have simple containment options that in practical terms aren’t available to rest of us.
For anyone outside those two countries to visit them, it’s a long flight. Even from one to the other (say Sydney to Wellington) is six hours on an airliner. Even in normal times, no-one arrives in either of those countries in a casual, everyday fashion – everyone who arrives has made a pretty substantial journey. They are not arriving only to go back the same way tomorrow, and then come again next week.
People just don’t flow in and out of those countries in the constant, casual, everyday way they flow in and out of European countries. For them to close the borders is quite easy – people just don’t make that major business trip and don’t take that major vacation. The closure of the borders does not inconvenience masses of people whose everyday lives involve constantly crossing those borders.
Australia is also an archipelago of relatively isolated cities, so it is also easier to crack down on a regional outbreak than it is in the UK.
LeSving wrote:
To this date there is no scientific evidence at all showing masks as an effective mean against Covid 19 among the general public.
NZ and Australia however, have taken a different course.
Kind of funny that you alway quote NZ as such a good example – you are obviously aware that NZ has mandatory masks in public transport in Auckland, on domestic flights, etc. – are you?
