From the abstract:
"The proportion of individuals with COVID-like symptoms was 7.62% (N=13,273) in the intervention arm and 8.62% (N=13,893) in the control arm."

That is a difference of 620 persons out of ~27,000.

Since the intervention in this case was multiple measures related to promoting masking and proper mask wearing, this suggest that mask policies may have only very small effects in reducing symptomatic COVID cases. I don't think it means that masks don't matter, but I don't see any standout evidence from this study that mandating masks or shaming non-compliant persons will make a dramatic difference.

This study appears to support the idea that while masks may be important in certain conditions and demographics, they will not dramatically change the long-term numbers of COVID infections. I don't think that a 10% reduction in seroprevalence is a game changer.

Calling this study "anti-vaccine bullshit" is anti-science.

The study authors are evaluating an important question that many, many people are curious about. Namely, do people who have previously been infected with SARS-CoV2 need a vaccine?

This is a crucial question because it will provide guidance on how to distribute vaccines to the billions of people around the world who are still desperately waiting for them. It is foolish to waste vaccine doses on already vaccinated people (and probably people who have recovered from previous SARS-CoV2 infections) IF those people are not at risk.

Vaccines are precious and important resources. Everyone should be motivated to use them as wisely as possible.

From the paper (p 12):

"Overall, 673,676 MHS members 16 years and older were eligible for the study group
of fully vaccinated SARS-CoV-2-naïve individuals; 62,883 were eligible for the study
group of unvaccinated previously infected individuals and 42,099 individuals were
eligible for the study group of previously infected and single-dose vaccinees."

"In model 1, we matched 16,215 persons in each group. Overall, demographic
characteristics were similar between the groups, with some differences in their
comorbidity profile (Table 1a)."

"During the follow-up period, 257 cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection were recorded, of
which 238 occurred in the vaccinated group (breakthrough infections) and 19 in the
previously infected group (reinfections). After adjusting for comorbidities, we found a
statistically significant 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for
breakthrough infection as opposed to reinfection (P0.001). Apart from age 60
years, there was no statistical evidence that any of the assessed comorbidities
significantly affected the risk of an infection during the follow-up period (Table 2a)."

"Nine cases of COVID-19-related hospitalizations were recorded, 8 of which were in
the vaccinated group and 1 in the previously infected group (Table S1). No COVID-
19-related deaths were recorded in our cohorts."

This data shows several important phenomenon: 1) for this population, "natural immunity" provided much greater protection against new infections than the vaccine, 2) the vaccine protected 673,438 (99.9% of vaccinated people!) from getting infected, 3) both vaccinated and "natural immunity" patients have extremely low rates of severe COVID symptoms so most people in either of those categories don't really need to worry about getting infected.

So, the obvious conclusions are that the vaccine is wonderful and provides excellent protection but that people who have already been infected are at very low risk of new infections. This is great news for everyone since it would suggest that a combination of vaccinations and people who have recovered from COVID will keep new infection rates very low. It also suggests that while vaccines are the best route for protection, there is no need to brow-beat people who already recovered from COVID and are refusing vaccines. They are very unlikely to get re-infected so (for now) it doesn't matter if they aren't vaccinated.

Obligatory caveats: this is one study from one population (Israel), it has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it is from a limited time frame. We won't know for many months exactly how it translates to the rest of the world but it does demonstrate that there is reason for optimism.

I have many fond memories of reading every single Andre Norton book I could find as a pre-teen and younger teenager. I still enjoy re-reading some of those from time to time. Great suggestion.

I'm surprised no one has recommended the Norby series by Janet and Isaac Asimov. They are targeted to pre-teens and I enjoyed them very much as a kid.

You got me. Thanks for correcting my sloppy reading.

Here are the results which TFS failed to mention: 1) Firefox 7 2) Chrome 14 3) IE 9 4) Opera 5) Safari

I have used VirtualBox quite a bit and I find it completely satisfactory. I have run both Win XP on Ubuntu hosts and Ubunutu on Win XP hosts and it has always worked very well. http://www.virtualbox.org/ I think it would do everything you want.

Just a reminder that any business that does not have profit as their sole purpose will not stay in business very long. That doesn't mean that business = evil, but it's good to remember that the purpose of a business is to make a profit. Nothing else. Overall I agree with your point though. I'm generally against more regualtions, but this is a good example of why they are probably needed in this case.