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

nature.com

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

#91

Post by sigstoat »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #8
hanklazard wrote: post #2

Anecdotally, as someone who works in a clinic where we test for COVID-19 much of the day (and have multiple positive patient tests per day), I can tell you that this editorial certainly seems correct. Even with our caution with PPE, I’m certain that we would have had a major outbreak among staff over the past year if this thing was transmitting efficiently via fomite—it’s just too difficult to use perfect form 100% o…

It seems like people have been saying this from the beginning. But no one can say for certain that there is little or no fomite risk, and hand washing and surface cleaning gives people something to do that helps them feel like they are in control.

treating surface cleaning as a big deal and the air as minor caused many business to make bad trade offs.

last summer target was making you wait in line longer (dangerous) while they carefully wiped down self checkout stations between users (minimally helpful).

i don’t know what they’re doing now, because i didn’t care to subject myself to that any further.

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

#92

Post by adventured »

That's because it makes people feel good to think that there is something they can do to clean away Covid by following a normal cleaning routine regarding surfaces, something people understand well. It reduces the sense of helplessness for the masses and that's also why it won't be going away as a routine when it comes to Covid.

It's basically sanitation theater.

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

#93

Post by betwixthewires »

The problem with this article is that it takes at face value the stated goals of the pandemic response: to slow the spread of coronavirus. And while that is a goal, it is not the top goal. If it could be, it probably would be.

The main goal is to soothe the public. People aren't told to wipe surfaces because it reduces the spread, people are told to wipe surfaces because this is all people can do. People are told to wear surgical masks, which say on the side of the box that they do not protect against viruses, because it is something they can do. People don't like to feel powerless. People cannot disinfect the air. But they can wipe surfaces and cover their faces with a piece of cloth, and keep busy with something to feel like they're doing something to protect themselves and others.

Public messaging exist to manage people, nothing more.

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

#94

Post by arduanika »

selimthegrim wrote: post #49
lambda_obrien wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just amazed he got doffing correct but donning incorrect, most people don't know the word doffing in my experience.

Doff one's cap probably fell out of common use when people stopped wearing hats.

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

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

#95

Post by 101008 »

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…

I think this was normal while doing sports, where you have no tissue at hand and need to expel mucus from your nose.

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

#97

Post by timr »

davidgay wrote: post #78
timr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are unfairly mis-representing the piece. They make a number of different calculations to estimate the IFR, based on observations available at the time. They then say the following: > This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two…

> They're very clearly making point estimates to contrast with the prevalent IFR estimates of the time (~2%), which we now know were entirely wrong. 0.01% (their estimate according to the post above) is far more "entirely wrong" than 2%. For instance, https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html mentions an estimate of 0.94% for Italy (in fact I have a hard time of viewing an early estimate 2% as signi…

An estimate of 0.01% is closer to what we know today than the ~2% estimates of the time. Current best point estimates for IFR are somewhere between 0.1%-0.5%, depending on population age.

But IFR is so tied to age that it's unhelpful to compare it from country to country. One of the reasons Italy's observed fatality rate is higher than average is because of the higher average age of is population. The CDC's current best estimates are:

>70yo: 5.4%

Even a small increase in the elderly population can dramatically influence the observed IFR for a given nation.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

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

#98

Post by betwixthewires »

null_object wrote: post #67
pragmatic wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Indeed the Swedish name for it indicates the farmer origins of the practice - but I’m talking about the streets of central Stockholm. Honestly, I genuinely don’t understand why no-one has even thought about this really common habit, and warned people not to do it.

Well it's like the Chinese letting babies shit in the street. Chinese have garments specifically designed for children to do this with ease.

Every nation on earth has agrarian origins. And our habits and behaviors shape our culture and continue beyond their utility even when our surroundings and lifestyles change. There's a lot of inertia and habits like these don't change without concerted and deliberate effort.

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

#99

Post by serf »

adonovan wrote: post #64
staunch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was #1 a flat-out lie? I though the CDC said that "masks work" was a statement with insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time, especially as they were cognizant that a run on masks could deny HCWs access to the tools of their trade. In other words, they were irresponsibly careful.

> insufficient peer-reviewed evidence for them to make it their official advice at the time

masks for viral protection isn't a new topic, and plenty of research is available[0] -- unless you're talking about only viral research pertaining to covid-19, which is fairly over-specific to legislate against/towards.

in other words: it was understood in the general scientific and medical public that masks help to reduce or prevent spread of airborne virus, to claim that the government should have waited for specific research to a singular strain is both excusing a willfully in-active government and portraying that government as scientifically credible for doing the so.

These actions, given the evidence that already existed that masks provide a net benefit against viral pathogens, were scientifically unsound. If I had the complete picture that was available to the U.S. government then maybe I could justify the actions by knowing that a call to use masks would cause a profound shortage of PPE for those that needed it -- and I think that's exactly what happened: the government saw that a call to use masks would cause a lack of goods, so instead of looking entirely ignorant to the problem it was decided to latch onto the logic that covid-19 was somehow totally unlike any virus and that novel research would need to be undertaken in order to justify the need for masks.

It's my opinion that masks were already well-enough researched, and that the surrogate viruses that were used in this research prior to covid-19 were a 'good-enough' approximate to understand that masks would be a net social benefit, if available. It's my opinion that other co-factors that the government was privvy to influenced their decision to push against mask use temporarily in the beginning.

[0]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mask+efficacy+virus&hl=...

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

#100

Post by mattkrause »

timr wrote: post #42
evan_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Wikipedia link you posted: > She is one of the primary authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely-discredited paper[15] which advocated a focused response to the COVID-19 pandemic based on levels of individual risk.[16][17] The World Health Organization, as well as other numerous academic and public-health bodies, have stated that the strategy proposed by the Declaration is dangerous, unethical, a…

Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy.

More like “defeasible”.

It’s not deductively valid in the same way that modus tollens is, but it is a often a good heuristic: the authority wouldn’t be recognized as such if they weren’t often correct in their area of expertise.

Thus, it’s fine to find an appeal “rationally compelling” as long as you bear in mind that the authority is also not infallible.

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