… all hail the @OBJ
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In the province of New Brunswick 
, 1 in 10 people currently have COVID.
The number is estimated to be 1 in 20 nationally. The news story pointed me to a site with some familiar names on the team, but which I hadn’t seen before. As usual, they are struggling with partial data. I’ll agree that the excess death figures are down from the start of the year. We might even be on the mend in Ontario. However… wait for it…
There was a tidbit on a note at the top of page 2 (this took a moment to sink in):
In 2023, the best predictor of excess mortality compared to 2022 is % population infected
I keep bumping into people whose lives have been scourged with Long COVID. The number of anecdotal discussions,at two conferences recently, about colleagues who “had a stroke”, are “out of commission”, “super-fit but suddenly had a heart attack”, was alarming.
Edit: Another tidbit from the COVID-19 Resource Canada page:
However, preliminary data from a large population study conducted among Quebec healthcare workers who developed long COVID (primarily during Omicron) found that the likelihood of developing long COVID did NOT decline with subsequent reinfections.
They refer to a May 2022 NHS study reporting 9.1% Long COVID with Omicron BA.2, and take the Quebec data to indicate a 2.3% chance of “reinfections [with] Omicron [that] led to activity-limiting symptoms lasting at least 12 weeks.”
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Article - Cell Host & Microbe
An atlas of continuous adaptive evolution in endemic human viruses
Kathryn E. Kistler, Trevor Bedford
October 24, 2023
DOI: doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2023.09.012
Highlights:
- Ongoing adaptive evolution in human endemic viruses is largely in surface proteins
- Immune evasion drives continuous adaptive evolution in many endemic human viruses
- Antigenic evolution occurs in several viral families
- SARS-CoV-2 is accumulating protein-coding changes faster than other endemic viruses
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Our daughter and husband just got their shot, me and the wife are going this week.
That should help the numbers.
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Tldr;
Any mask (including a cloth one) is more effective than no mask at all.
N95 means that is at least 95% effective at stopping disease carrying particles.
Getting infected from a used mask is highly unlikely.
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In a day of explosive evidence, one of Mr Johnson’s former aides also said he thought Mr Johnson had questioned why the economy was being destroyed “for people who will die anyway soon”.
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Boris is turning 60 - best to stop feeding him or covering his healthcare.
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You first, de Pfeffel.
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An interesting report on what the pandemic revealed about ventilation, varying government standards, and how some companies/agencies are addressing problems in buildings:
I found it encouraging that Amazon was highlighted - maybe they’ve learned the importance of HVAC in warehouses after multiple cases of injury/death due to lack of any air conditioning.
Another report on masking:
ETA: Oops, it’s already above posted by @dfaris
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Covid inquiry: Read the private WhatsApp messages from inside Downing Street
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Licking the outside is still not recommended.
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While true, it should be pointed out that licking random objects is, in general, not recommended.
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Aw, but daaaaad.
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That could explain a lot…
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We have a family of wild kids on our street, the youngest, about 5 years old, came to our door on Halloween to thank us for the candy bags. He had a big plastic something or other in his mouth. I asked him what that was, he didn’t know. Where did you get it? He found it. You might want to not put it in your mouth. He didn’t see the problem.
Don’t put your lips on that thing. What the hell is that?
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… the title of my new podcast 
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Grandma always said “You gotta eat 2 teaspoons of dirt a day to stay healthy.” Of course, that was back in the day of healthy dirt, so…
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