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High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

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91–100 of 105 posts

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#91
post #4

Sure, but what about when it gets cold again? It may come back even worse

I think this thing is so contagious that all the weak people will already be dead.

The second wave might kill a few of the survivors that had their immune system weakened since the first wave, but it shouldn't be as much people as the first time.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#92
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By then, we should have enough testing kits, and authorities should be better prepared to handle it.

Not to mention a better baseline immunity within the population, and more preparedness as a whole. Testing kit shortages, lack of information, no vaccine, etc. are all a function of how little time we've had to respond. If we can buy 3 months, that's a lot of bonus time to prepare.

Europe had about 3 months compared to China and is handling the situation much worse.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#93
post #4

Sure, but what about when it gets cold again? It may come back even worse

It can and will. For that matter, it's an RNA virus that is morphing as a function of the error factor of replication, so vaccines may be ineffective (for the same reason we continue to get the "common cold" again and again over our lives, as well as the flu -- the signature keeps changing).

We will see.

Though it's worth noting that there are a lot of very contrary signals on whether it attenuates with heat. Some find that it doesn't, while some do. The very origin of this -- Wuhan -- had very temperate conditions when the outbreak began, and transmission seems to be much worse in the US than in Canada.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#95
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should develop responses to pathogens that have the ability to wipe humanity off the galaxy. Given how close SARS and SARS-CoV-2 is, maybe the SARS vaccine could be applied to the current case.

I think that's likely, but it's understandably difficult to convince anyone to spend a few hundred million dollars to develop vaccine that might never be used.

Seems like a pretty good deal right now. Our economic system has structural pathologies that make it extremely difficult to meaningfully organize whole populations.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#96
post #33
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reduce the transmission of the virus, do you not reduce the transmission of the disease?

I mean, that's why it's pedantic. Technically you can't "transmit" the disease. The disease consists of the effects on the body. Also, you can transmit the virus without having the disease, which is what makes it dangerous since you have no idea. It's like you can transmit HIV without having AIDS for years: >Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is defined in terms of either a CD4+ T cell count below 200 cells pe…

Well, fair. My assessment was based on the assumption that the distribution of outcomes for a patient isn't affected by the source of the infection. If you had some hypothetical way of transmitting the virus only to hosts who would then develop symptoms of the disease, I guess you could argue that you could reduce transmissions of the virus while maintaining transmissions of the disease.

That'd be impressively evil though.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#97
post #4

Sure, but what about when it gets cold again? It may come back even worse

I think this thing is so contagious that all the weak people will already be dead. The second wave might kill a few of the survivors that had their immune system weakened since the first wave, but it shouldn't be as much people as the first time.

Surely surviving the first wave will be a plus against a second wave as you already have some immunization?

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#98
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Do you realize Africa is a huge continent with all kinds of weather right? https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/?continent=africa

There's a visualization here: https://twitter.com/JeromeRoos/status/1236729011889418246

Those temperatures are normalized to sea-level. If you go to say La Paz or Macchu Pichu expecting scorching weather based on that graphic you are going to have a bad time.

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#99
post #24

But not by enough. This epidemic has a growth rate (R) of at least 2. The article claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively." The March to July difference for New York City is only 19C. San Francisco, 9C. For both cities, humidity is relatively uniform year round. Even assuming this result is meaningful, it still leaves…

> For both cities, humidity is relatively uniform year round. There is no way humidity is relatively uniform year round in NYC. It gets very humid during the summer and very dry during the winter.

The relative humidity in NYC does not vary much from 60-65%. Absolute humidity is measured as grams water per cubic meter and is virtually never reported because what is relevant to human comfort is evaporation.

Indoor humidity in the winter is generally low because increasing the temperature without adding moisture is lowers relative humidy.

https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Humidity-per...

Re: High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of Covid-19

#100
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth would they do this? What sort of application does this have or serve? If it's a bioweapon, why was it published? Is there any concrete genetic or documented evidence to show COVID-19 is engineered? This is a big claim and has severe ramifications for China, if true.

According to the paper, they did it in order to figure out why SARS-CoV was able to infect humans, while numerous other SARS-like viruses are not. Their hyposthesis was that the critical feature is a particular sequence in the protein found on the "spike" that the virus uses to bind to host receptors. By constructing a new SARS-like virus with the desired spike protein, they were able to validate that hypothesis. It…

I want to repeat what I've said in other comments, because what I initially said was inaccurate. These researchers didn't actually create a new coronavirus, but rather a much simpler and safer virus purpose-built to test some receptor-binding structures. This is a well-established way to study viruses safely.

This kind of work is critical if we're to learn how to develop vaccines faster in response to epidemics.

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