Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 196 posts

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#51

Post by selimthegrim »

timr wrote: post #20
DanBC wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who on that list is a "renown epidemiologist"?

Sunetra Gupta is a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunetra_Gupta Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of Medicine at Stanford University, and a long-time researcher into public health policy: https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya Martin Kulldorff is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, with a long history of research into epi…

Bhattacharya (and Ioannidis while we are talking about Stanford faculty) have gotten a lot of pushback and by no means represent any sort of consensus.

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#53

Post by itronitron »

jacobkg wrote: post #27

Serious Question: I have been super paranoid about surfaces for the past year. Disinfecting groceries, quarantining packages, washing hands after touching the mail or opening takeout, etc. This is pretty draining. Should my takeaway be that all of these precautions are unnecessary?

Well, it's worked for you so far. I don't disinfect groceries or quarantine packages but I always wash my hands after coming back inside (from the store or checking mail.)

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#54

Post by hntrader »

minikites wrote: post #33
nlh wrote: post #9

I predict we’re going to look back at ourselves in a few years and find a few things particularly egregious, much as we look back at “smoking is good for your health!” ads from the 1950s: 1. Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers); and 2. Our collective obsession around Mar-Apr 2020 with surface disinfecting. The shortage on Clorox wipes, the obsessiv…

>Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers) I see this mentioned a lot, is this really a big factor? Did a ton of people genuinely begin the pandemic by believing officials and then after a few weeks start to disbelieve officials? That just doesn't make sense to me. I mostly see this issue used as a bad faith cudgel to justify not wearing a mask now, but…

Yes, it was a big factor. The WHO was discouraging mask use for months after the pandemic started, even though we knew that the original SARS was airborne and we knew that masks were effective against other coronaviruses. They were pushing the line that there was "no evidence", when what they really mean was "there isn't overwhelming and conclusive evidence, and I am not inclined towards Bayesian reasoning in public because it presents too much career risk and I'm a total coward".

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#55

Post by pragmatic »

null_object wrote: post #41

In Sweden people continually blow their nose by holding one nostril and blasting the mucus from the other straight out into the air. Joggers of both sexes (but mostly men) do this all the time, even with other people all around them on the street. When I last got the subway an older guy did it on the platform, just before the train doors opened and the passengers walked out - presumably straight through the fine drop…

This is a thing old farmers do. Usually not around too many other people though.

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#56

Post by timr »

hilbertseries wrote: post #21
timr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration said anything of the sort. This kind of çomment is unhelpful and uncharitable. It's an ad hominem attack.

> The declaration claims that increased infection of those at lower risk would lead to a build-up of immunity in the population that would eventually also protect those at higher risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus We’ve seen what happens when the virus is allowed to run unchecked in populations. New variants start popping up that are resistant to the previous version. Further, this whole isolate those most likely to die…

> New variants start popping up that are resistant to the previous version.

There is no evidence that new variants have escaped natural immunity in any population. To date, all of the known variants are neutralized by existing antibodies and immune sera. This is a fact -- we've seen effects on titers in a few papers, but nothing has yet to escape immunity.

That said, immune escape is probably inevitable -- this virus mutates far too quickly and has too many zoonotic reservoirs to prevent that from happening. To the extent that this occurs, a mix of natural and vaccine-induced immunity is likely the fastest and most robust way to suppress the virus.

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#57

Post by adewinter »

staunch wrote: post #14
nlh wrote: post #9

I predict we’re going to look back at ourselves in a few years and find a few things particularly egregious, much as we look back at “smoking is good for your health!” ads from the 1950s: 1. Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers); and 2. Our collective obsession around Mar-Apr 2020 with surface disinfecting. The shortage on Clorox wipes, the obsessiv…

1. Was just a flat out lie by various public health officials that they justified for the greater good. It was probably the biggest and easiest-to-prevent mistake of the pandemic, and it certainly cost many lives. 2. It still makes sense to wash hands, use gloves, and wipe down anything coming into your house that was recently touched by strangers. There's no good reason to allow a known vector, even if it's lower ri…

What part of 1. Was a lie? It's a fact many hospitals were extremely lacking in PPE, especially when it came to N95 masks, at the start of the pandemic. There was a shortage/crisis to the point where there were many local compaigns to manufacture basic PPE like cloth masks and face shields for hospitals. How could you forget about that so quickly?

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#58

Post by timr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #44
timr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Renowned people can still be full of shit. And this tone is certainly rational and charitable.

She was demonstrably full of shit here. A claim that renowned people can't be full of shit would be the irrational one, I'd think.

Your opinion is your own. I could easily cite half a dozen occasions where Anthony Fauci has made equally incorrect pronouncements. People make mistakes.

Your tone is unnecessary.

Re: Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces

#60

Post by war1025 »

minikites wrote: post #33
nlh wrote: post #9

I predict we’re going to look back at ourselves in a few years and find a few things particularly egregious, much as we look back at “smoking is good for your health!” ads from the 1950s: 1. Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers); and 2. Our collective obsession around Mar-Apr 2020 with surface disinfecting. The shortage on Clorox wipes, the obsessiv…

>Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers) I see this mentioned a lot, is this really a big factor? Did a ton of people genuinely begin the pandemic by believing officials and then after a few weeks start to disbelieve officials? That just doesn't make sense to me. I mostly see this issue used as a bad faith cudgel to justify not wearing a mask now, but…

> people genuinely begin the pandemic by believing officials and then after a few weeks start to disbelieve officials?

(Anecdote)

At the start of the pandemic, I took it all very seriously. We were in the fog of war and didn't know how serious it was, so we assumed it was very dangerous. We did our best to avoid people and do our part to "stop the spread" or "flatten the curve".

At the beginning of June, I started to get more bold with things. Wife and kids still avoided stores, but I would go for more than just the weekly groceries.

Sometime in July / August we started seeing some of our friends again.

September / October we started going to stores as a family again. Also started going to church again.

At this point, our habits are changed to the point that we just don't really go anywhere, but we don't avoid anything for "safety" reasons. We wear our masks in stores, etc. because most have signs on the doors asking us to and we try to be polite about it.

At this point I think I can count 20+ people of all ages that I know personally who have had Coronavirus. I don't have a terribly big social circle. In the words of my best friend, whose family had it over Christmas, "I wouldn't recommend going out and catching it on purpose, but you get through it just fine"

Which is to say, I think we know much more about the virus now than we did then, and the risk profile is very low for people without serious pre-existing health conditions or the very old.

And hell, my grandma's nursing home had an outbreak. I think they had maybe 6 or 7 people die out of the 60 or so people who caught it. That's a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy is that they were prevented from seeing family for ten months now and had to suffer alone, many of them degrading significantly from the lack of interaction. Thankfully they are getting the vaccine and should be allowed to open up soon.

Post reply on HN