Denmark already introduced a lockdown that goes through January, but it’s a mild lockdown, so I don’t think lockdown alone is my most compelling reason… But it is funny the current lockdown shuts down bars at midnight and we’re going there for NYE.
ETA: Denmark is actually under Do Not Travel warning for a mix of covid and terrorism risk…
When do you have to decide?
I’m with @rural that my biggest worry about travel right now is the restrictions, not covid itself. I’ve got a few domestic trips coming up that I feel comfortable taking while boosted/masked/etc. But I would be nervous about an international trip and getting stuck in my hotel (or in the country!).
That said, if you can still get a refund right up until you travel, you can see what the situation is in real time before you choose to go.
We can get a refund up until 3 days before travel. But from a practical standpoint, I can’t have shroedinger’s international trip going on much longer 
We’re supposed to leave in 14 days…
Does your travel insurance (if you have it) still cover you with the state department warning?
If the answer is yes, I’m inclined to ignore their warning. Because the US is probably actually doing worse than they are right now.
Will their lockdown affect your plans?
I’d go, personally. As long as you can do at least 70% of what you plan.
(Don’t know about the terrorism risk, but again- is it really worse than traveling in the US? I think we are in a glass house and throwing stones.)
We’re mostly meeting up with friends and wandering around the city, so I don’t think there’s much of a restriction on our current plans - it looks like tivoli gardens is still open, and we’re staying there. It’s SSO’s bday while we are there. so I think @aaronpk gets final vote, and he’s leaning no.
I wondered the same! BY the same token, I didn’t see it on any other country I’m visiting state dept page, including Kenya and Finland and I generally think…well the state dept does have more info than me about this…
Yea, my big fear was having to pay for 14 days of quarantine in a hotel in the most expensive country in the world 
Don’t currently have it, just have rider health insurance that covers covid-19 evac/medical. I don’t usually get insurance for things that I can conceivably cover on my own.
Well the good news is it looks like I didn’t catch a cold on the way back from this trip like I did last month coming back from Germany. But I’m still not thrilled about the idea of getting back on a plane in 2 weeks, and also share similar concerns about how much stuff is going to be open/accessible under whatever lockdown conditions are like by then.
It’s only been a lil over 48 hours. don’t guarantee anything yet.
If what you want to do will be open I would probably go. There was a article in the New York Times yesterday that explains why Covid is killing more people that are overweight. It hasn’t been peer reviewed yet so there’s still much to learn. However, if the premise is true then it will also lead to better treatments which is a positive outcome.
My sources in Denmark are mainly concerned about school closures. But they’ve found that generally the test plus passport system has let them enjoy life even when they think they are in lockdown.
I’m watching and waiting for December plans, so Id probably cancel. But everyone has to figure it out
Surprised that Denmark was called out specifically in the Washington Post today.
Wow I just read that article and it sounds a lot like fatphobic trash to me. They didn’t even interview anyone who might have an alternative explanation for what’s causing differing Covid outcomes between people of different body sizes, or even if there really is a difference?
Wake me up when this is peer-reviewed and I can hear analysis from a doctor who isn’t drunk off of anti-fat Kool-Aid.
Honestly I like the study you identified better since it also appears that HBP and respiratory issues aren’t related either and I have both neither of which is under my control. That study is over a year old and I think it’s going to take a few years until we really know what’s contributing to bad outcomes. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some people are more genetically predisposed to worse outcomes. In the meantime I am triple vaccinated which is all anyone can do.
Western Australia opens to the world on 5 February, 2022.
How do you feel?
We are open now. I’m not sure where my risk tolerance is. I’m supposed to go to a wedding on the Gold Coast this week with my parents who will have just flown in from Adelaide. I can’t decide if it’s fine or not. All adults at the wedding will be fully vaccinated.
I don’t know. I’m going to buy some masks, and some for Duckling. His GP gave us an all-clear to get him vaxxed as soon as he turns 5, just because we happened to take him in for other reasons. We already decided Pumpkin won’t go to group care until 2023. I am not sure how we deal with February => April…
Well said! I wanted to piggyback on your response and share this one that I just got in a bonus email from Christy Harrison (dietician with health at every size, intuitive eating approach). Behind a spoiler because it’ s long:
These kinds of media reports are incredibly upsetting to many people in larger bodies—a group that’s already been unjustly stigmatized throughout this pandemic—and I wish journalists would think about the unintended consequences of these pieces and reconsider publishing them.
To me this article is a particularly egregious example, because it uncritically reports on one study without noting its significant limitations (more on those below) and extrapolates from it broadly in a way that feels premature at best . Unfortunately, this story has now been picked up by a number of smaller media outlets around the world, many of which are running their own similarly uncritical versions of it.
But instead of focusing on the NYT article here, I want to go straight to the source and look at the study it’s reporting on. That’s often very telling when it comes to news reports like this—and in this particular case, looking at the study itself significantly undercuts the message of the article .
For those who want to read it (which I’d recommend doing with extreme caution or not at all if you’re recovering from disordered eating), here’s the full text of the study (CW: BMI numbers, weight-stigmatizing language) . The first important thing to note is that it’s a preprint that hasn’t been peer reviewed, and it’s unclear where or whether it ever will be published . Many Covid-related preprints have been retracted throughout the pandemic, including several that were highly publicized before the retractions. Preprint research really shouldn’t be reported on as fact or used to guide clinical decisions (as the disclaimers on many preprint servers say), but in practice these warnings often get ignored when big media outlets write long pieces on preprint studies, with maybe one line urging caution in interpreting the results (as was the case in the NYT piece).
Even if the results of this particular preprint ultimately hold up under peer review, this study is TINY and should be viewed more as a pilot than anything else . The researchers don’t highlight that fact, but in combing through this very long manuscript it becomes evident that the study is only based on in vitro experiments in fat cells from three people , plus in vivo experiments from the autopsies of another eight people . That’s WAY too small a sample size to be anything other than perhaps a jumping-off point for future studies in much larger samples. Even the researchers acknowledge that limitation.
What’s more, seven of the eight autopsy participants were age 65 or older (the other one was 58), and most were in their 80s. We know that age is a major independent risk factor for severe Covid-19 outcomes, and yet the researchers don’t control for age when making pronouncements about the role of fat tissue in Covid. The same is true for other confounding variables like preexisting disease—diabetes, heart disease, etc.—which many of these participants had. To be fair, this study wasn’t really designed to control for those things; it simply looked at whether and to what extent Covid-19 was present in different types of fat cells. But by presenting these limited findings as though they might explain the supposed connection between higher weight and severe COVID-19, the researchers are making a cognitive leap that isn’t warranted given what we know about confounding variables like age and preexisting conditions.
Finally, I’m always wary of studies of fat cells for the simple fact that those cells come from people whose stress/inflammatory responses were inevitably shaped by the conditions of their lives (likely including weight stigma and other forms of discrimination, weight cycling, disordered eating, etc.) , and yet researchers treat these disembodied cells as somehow more “objective” than studies in living human beings. Of course there are many things we can learn from cell studies, but I personally don’t think the (supposed) impact of fatness on health is one of those things, given the huge role that we know sociocultural factors play in determining outcomes for higher-weight people.
To me this is enough evidence to say let’s put this study’s results aside for now (along with the uncritical media reports about the study) and focus on more important things, like access to vaccines and reducing weight stigma and racial inequities in care for Covid-19 . I’ll be interested to follow this preprint to see if it makes it to publication, and I’ll continue to watch the science on weight/fatness and Covid. But to date I’ve still seen nothing to refute the point I’ve been making since early in the pandemic that weight stigma—including healthcare providers’ biases about body size that can lead to poorer-quality care for higher-weight Covid patients, as we also saw in the H1N1 pandemic—is a major, unappreciated risk factor that must be taken into account in any research or reporting on Covid and weight. (Interestingly, even some high-profile diet-culture adherents seem to agree with me on this and other points, as this article exemplifies [ CW: BMI numbers, weight-stigmatizing language ].)
By the way, if you’re looking for a relatively quick and easy way to make sense of articles like this, you might check out a method called SIFT that’s become popular in media-literacy courses. I learned about SIFT while reporting on how to avoid wellness misinformation for my next book, and I think the method also can be useful for stories like this NYT article on Covid and fat cells, or really any media reporting on early-stage health or nutrition research. (Not saying these articles are all misinformation per se, just that the framework is useful for many situations in which the quality of information is uncertain; in fact, I’ve been instinctively practicing something like SIFT for years without realizing it, thanks to my training in journalism and public health.) The method has four principles, each of which may be more or less useful in different instances (although the first one arguably is always necessary):
In many cases, you’d be hard pressed to “find better coverage” than The New York Times (which is why I’ve been a longtime subscriber and occasional contributor). But in situations like this, where they’re reporting on tiny preprint studies in ways that raise anxiety and alarm among an already stigmatized group, even the Times has some stories that need to be SIFTed out . To me, for all the reasons cited above, this story about Covid and fat cells is one of them.
nice! thanks for sharing that!
Love the SIFT method. That is so librarian of her lol.
A friend of mine is trying to get a third dose of the 12-17 Covid vaccine for her immune compromised son per their immunologist but she can’t find it in our area. She’s called 15+ places including the health department. Basically if she can’t find it in a few days it will not be safe for her son to go to family Christmas … again.
Ooof, that’s hard. How old her is son? I don’t think any boosters at all are approved for kids under 16, even in high risk cases. If he’s younger than that, the immunologist would probably have to personally give it to him off-label (and I’m not sure anyone is actually doing that, even though they theoretically can now that Pfizer has full approval).