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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

#131

Post by dilyevsky »

timr wrote: post #128
dilyevsky wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you read? “Do nothing” means do nothing. Us (and gb) clearly had done something (quite a lot actually) even when folks like yourself tried very hard to convince everyone not to

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

#132

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

i am taking an exam which i have to do today in a few hours. offline, 30 in large room, no ventilation and no masks for 60-70% of examinees. fuck me

this is india btw, where magically cases have dropped even when there is no lockdown and people are not willing to get vaccinated because homegrown vaccine hasnt even completed clinical trials yet...

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

#133

Post by stjohnswarts »

loyukfai wrote: post #109
gxqoz wrote: post #40

One thing I'm curious about is whether all this extra "deep cleaning" is going to have other negative health consequences. i.e. from increased indoor concentrations of the chemicals used to do the cleaning.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-downside-of-cl... // The downside of clean: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts A paper published in January raised the possibility that the pandemic could make some people more susceptible to chronic conditions and diseases, including asthma and obesity. //

Good thing I'm still living like a slob and working from home then. The biome in my home is very healthy

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

#134

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

I recall almost from the beginning that they said wear clothe masks even if made from an old tee shirt so that medical personal could have the limited PPE, NO ONE said "don't wear a mask because it does nothing" . Clearly that never happened, not ever, except in various "the virus is a hoax" online platforms. Some initial people said 6 ft distance was enough if not wearing a mask. I have been following this as close as anyone since the beginning aside from medical professionals.

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

#136

Post by snypher »

nikolay wrote: post #118
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #96

It's been a year now, why can't I buy a N95 mask?

You can - on eBay! But prepare to pay $5+/piece (over $10 and even $20 for 3M ones). Meanwhile, supposedly, price gouging was supposed to be persecuted. There are lots of KN95 fakes, by the way. There are tons of KF94 authentic ones on Amazon.

>KF94

Can we please have a global standard on masks already?

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

#137

Post by betwixthewires »

pbourke wrote: post #105
betwixthewires wrote: post #93

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…

> 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. It likely has some protection, and it inhibits the onward spread of the virus. If enough people wear them, it has a protective effect on the entire population: “The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducin…

Wearing a grocery bag instead of a condom will likely also reduce your risk of unwanted pregnancy, that doesn't translate into being effectively protective.

Masks help lower droplets and aerosol in the air from your breath. So they slow the contagion. But they do not stop it, if the average person were likely to contract a contagion within 6 months with normal behavior and a mask reduces transmissibility by 50%, this just means the average person is now likely to contract it within a year. It slows the spread. It does not reduce your risk of contracting the virus over your lifetime. And if you have comorbidities and are at risk, you are just as likely to die when you get it 1 year from now or 6 months from now.

Masks did give us more time to develop a vaccine. So in the end they helped society. But they do not protect you. The only ways to protect yourself are a vaccine, social isolation until the contagion is eradicated, or hermetically sealing yourself in a plastic bodysuit every time you are in close proximity to other people.

A lot of people confuse these two concepts (managing a population vs managing individuals) and think that they apply to and correlate directly with one another. They do not. It is the same counterintuitive mistake as misunderstanding test accuracy and false positive rate. This is the only point I was trying to make. CDC guidelines are not designed to protect you in a pandemic, they're designed to manage a population.

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

#138

Post by cameldrv »

I haven't seen a single case study that conclusively demonstrates that fomite transmission occurs at all.

There have been a few cases from New Zealand that have been attributed to fomites, but then when you go look at it, it's "they were infected by touching the same elevator button." It's certainly curious that fomite transmission happens in a very small enclosed space with relatively little air circulation.

What I've never seen is a case such as "they were infected by picking up a package dropped off outside their door", or "they were infected by using the same playground equipment a few minutes later." All of the cases have some element of people sharing the same air.

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

#139

Post by Johnny555 »

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.

But telling people to do something that's not known to reduce risk distracts people from doing the things that help the most. Instead of a store spending thousands of dollars on cleaning supplies and labor to disinfect floors and shelves 3 times a day, they could spend that money improving ventilation.

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

#140

Post by Johnny555 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #93

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…

which say on the side of the box that they do not protect against viruses

As has been stated repeatedly by the CDC and others, the mask guidelines aren't meant to protect you from the virus, they are meant to protect others from you by reducing the viral laden droplets that you spread while breathing and talking.

There's a reason why they are called "surgical masks", because those are the masks that surgeons wear to protect you from them.

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