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

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121–130 of 196 posts

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

#121
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a ridiculous post. It’s not about _you_, it’s about vulnerable people who you were willingly becoming a vector of infection for. Your friend who recommended “not to go out and get it, but it isn’t that bad” doesn’t know if they gave it to a vulnerable person. It’s never been just about you or how you and your circle will handle it.

> Your friend who recommended “not to go out and get it, but it isn’t that bad” doesn’t know if they gave it to a vulnerable person. Yes, I'm sure the 20 days they were collectively quarantined was completely reckless and putting people in danger. Edit: Also, his wife caught it at work. Where she was being, you know, essential.

You completely missed the point. The point is that your approach is self-centered and focused on how you will react to the virus. It’s never been about you, it’s about being a vector of transmission. The more risk you take, the more chance you pass it to someone who can’t handle catching it.

You will likely never see the consequences of that, but you could have transmitted the virus to someone who died.

It’s not a lot to ask for people to refrain from social gatherings and unnecessary activities in order to protect their fellow humans. Do no harm and all that you know...

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

#122
post #81
post #59

Why can't we put HEPA purifiers in every room?

We should. But it takes hours to cycle all the air in a room through one. I haven't heard of any covid studies, but don't think it replaces a mask.

>We should. But it takes hours to cycle all the air in a room through one

hours? A random hepa filter I searched up costs $215, has an airflow rate of 246CFM , and is rated for coverage of 361 sq. ft. Assuming a room with that area and a ceiling height of 9ft, that works out to 3249 cubic feet. Dividing that by the airflow gets you 13.2 minutes, which is the time it takes to cycle the same amount of air as the room's volume.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strange logic... since we all are going to die anyway, we shouldn't worry about causes of preventable death? So i guess we don't need drunk driving laws... only about 10,000 people a year die in the US from drunk drivers, they were going to die anyway. The world keeps on moving. No reason to work on curing cancer. Dead someday anyway. Yes, death comes to us all. That has no bearing on whether we should work t…

I just looked up the CDC data and it says ~0.7% of the US population dies each year. Out of ~330 million people, that's 2.4 million people each year. So assuming that 400k figure is excess mortality, that means 17% more people died last year than normal. That is tragic, but the way it gets talked about, you would think we were at 10x or more.

17% more people dying every year is a huge increase. Why do you feel the need to downplay it?

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

#124

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…

> 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.

How busy are the streets? If they're not that busy, it's probably a non-issue from a viral load point of view. Both the exposure time (less than 10 seconds if you're just walking past) and the concentration (open air, easy to disperse) likely makes it less dangerous to a passer-by than a 5 minute bus/subway ride.

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

#125
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 b…

The US’s observed CFR stands at 1.7% right now... plenty of first world countries with excellent testing are above 2%. I honestly am shocked people are still lying about all of this.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

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

#126
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

The US’s observed CFR stands at 1.7% right now... plenty of first world countries with excellent testing are above 2%. I honestly am shocked people are still lying about all of this. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

CFR != IFR. A huge portion of infections in the US are never reported or detected.

I can't believe people are still confusing these. Dividing fatalities by known cases is completely wrong, and is not the definition of IFR.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strange logic... since we all are going to die anyway, we shouldn't worry about causes of preventable death? So i guess we don't need drunk driving laws... only about 10,000 people a year die in the US from drunk drivers, they were going to die anyway. The world keeps on moving. No reason to work on curing cancer. Dead someday anyway. Yes, death comes to us all. That has no bearing on whether we should work t…

I just looked up the CDC data and it says ~0.7% of the US population dies each year. Out of ~330 million people, that's 2.4 million people each year. So assuming that 400k figure is excess mortality, that means 17% more people died last year than normal. That is tragic, but the way it gets talked about, you would think we were at 10x or more.

>That is tragic, but the way it gets talked about, you would think we were at 10x or more.

Then again, we've invaded foreign countries and sacrificed our civil liberties ("war on terror") for way less deaths than that.

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

#128
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's saying that Ferguson's projections were wrong. They certainly have been wrong -- wildly so -- in most of the world. He also projected 2.2M deaths in the United States, and that hospitals would be over-run in the UK even with interventions. The predictions from the original paper do not hold up well in retrospect: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/m...

That piece of report doesn’t have us numbers. Gb looks totally in line with what had actually happened. 2.2M doesn’t sound unreasonable either since we are already almost at a quarter of that (assuming you even trust florida numbers). So she was wildly wrong, more so than other researchers, still clearly wrong but doubled down. So what’s your point exactly?

If you think "forecast was off by a factor of 5" (2.2M vs. 440k US; 500k vs. 100k UK) is "totally in line with what happened", there's probably not a lot for us to talk about.

Gupta was saying that the Ferguson models were wrong. The models have...not been right. Objectively.

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not even necessarily close proximity: “Infected after 5 minutes, from 20 feet away: South Korea study shows coronavirus’ spread indoors” https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-12-09/five-m...

Thanks for sharing this. I finally have unequivocal data to support my argument that we should not eat indoors at restaurants.

First published back in April, 2020:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

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

#130
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US’s observed CFR stands at 1.7% right now... plenty of first world countries with excellent testing are above 2%. I honestly am shocked people are still lying about all of this. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

CFR != IFR. A huge portion of infections in the US are never reported or detected. I can't believe people are still confusing these. Dividing fatalities by known cases is completely wrong, and is not the definition of IFR.

Just do the math though, 500k deaths (+ whatever number of deaths not reported as such) vs what proportion of cases are unreported.. 50%? 75%? Help me get to an IFR approaching 0.1%..
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