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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

#181

Post by Anthony-G »

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…

I’m living in Europe but a year after the spread of Covid-19 this Atlantic article¹ is still relevant.

I live in a city so I can buy from local, brick-and-mortar retail almost exclusively and I prefer to support specialist stores over general, e.g., buy vegetables from the local fruit-and-veg shop rather than the supermarket. However, I’ve been very frustrated by the fact that pharmacies I’ve gone to don’t have any better a selection of masks than other shops. I’ve also yet to come across any masks that have some sort of quality mark or certified to some standard. I find it crazy that the majority of masks for sale to the public are “fashion masks” which offer no guarantees of effectiveness.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/01/why-arent...

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

#182

Post by hanklazard »

lambda_obrien wrote: post #30
legerdemain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donning. As in "don we now our gay apparel," and so forth.

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

we joke about these terms all the time, so they're frequently in the air ...

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

#183

Post by cameldrv »

joshspankit wrote: post #166
cameldrv wrote: post #138

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'…

By your logic it sounds like it would be basically impossible to convince someone of fomite transmission.

I provided two specific examples, where if we had a case study like that, I would be convinced. What I want to see is two people handling the same object but not breathing the same air. Could be a delivered package, a delivered food container, or any object brought from an index case to an infected person by a third uninfected person.

This is precisely what people were worried about with everyone washing their groceries back in March/April, and I don't believe there is a single case that's been shown to have resulted from something like this.

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

#184

Post by joshspankit »

cameldrv wrote: post #183
joshspankit wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your logic it sounds like it would be basically impossible to convince someone of fomite transmission.

I provided two specific examples, where if we had a case study like that, I would be convinced. What I want to see is two people handling the same object but not breathing the same air. Could be a delivered package, a delivered food container, or any object brought from an index case to an infected person by a third uninfected person. This is precisely what people were worried about with everyone washing their grocer…

I did not mean to say that you didn't provide examples, and I'm certainly not arguing for/against fomite transmission (way above my pay grade) but the question is where do you draw the line?

> 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.

By the logic of "Yes, they say it's from the button, but it's logical to assume that it was actually the air", if there was a report of exactly one of the scenarios you described, would you say "Ok, it's definitely fomites", or would you automatically start thinking "They say they picked up the package after it was dropped off, but did they open the door just as the delivery person left and it was actually transmission by breathing the same air?"

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #158
_jal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one way people lose my trust is to tell me to do useless things for my perceived psychological benefit. I have both changed doctors and jobs for this reason. Treat me like a child and you're out of my life.

I’ve got to be honest, that does sound rather childish on your part.

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by Capira »

ceejayoz wrote: post #177
Capira wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDC states officially: "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned." And the median age was above 80. A German professor performed about 100 autopsies and came to the same conclusion. BTW: Who pays this self-proclaimed "fact checker"?

Yes. 6% have COVID as the only cause. That doesn't mean the other 94% weren't COVID deaths, just that their medical histories involved other conditions as well. > He noted that the 6% figure includes cases where COVID-19 was listed as the only cause of death. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didn’t die of Covid-19. They did,” Fauci said on ABC’s “Good Morning America…

Fauci is a highly controversial source. And I doubt you can make such absolute statements given that the data quality is so poor. Even the WHO stated that PCR tests cannot detect an infection. It is only an indicator for doctors to make a diagnosis. So, how can you be so sure?

BTW: Seems like those self-proclaimed "fact checkers" are funded by the Annenberg Foundation which has close ties to big pharma...

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

#187

Post by cameldrv »

joshspankit wrote: post #184
cameldrv wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I provided two specific examples, where if we had a case study like that, I would be convinced. What I want to see is two people handling the same object but not breathing the same air. Could be a delivered package, a delivered food container, or any object brought from an index case to an infected person by a third uninfected person. This is precisely what people were worried about with everyone washing their grocer…

I did not mean to say that you didn't provide examples, and I'm certainly not arguing for/against fomite transmission (way above my pay grade) but the question is where do you draw the line? > 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…

If there was a single report of exactly one of the scenarios I described, I would have more doubt about fomites not being an issue. Ideally there would be more than a single documented transmission event.

If fomites were a thing, you should see contact tracing coming up with things like "the delivery driver dropped off 30 packages and 6 people got sick" or "the chef at a takeout restaurant packed up 30 orders and 5 people got sick." I've never seen anything like this though.

At this point, a year and 100 million cases in, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

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

#188

Post by timr »

davidgay wrote: post #149
timr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Strangely enough, though dividing total US deaths by the total US population gives a population death rate of 0.135%, and on a per-state basis 5 states are above 0.2%. That's a definite lower bound on the IFR and more-than-obvious evidence that neither 0.1%, or 0.01% are plausible IFRs.

> dividing total US deaths by the total US population gives a population death rate of 0.135%, and on a per-state basis 5 states are above 0.2%. That's a definite lower bound on the IFR and more-than-obvious evidence that neither 0.1%, or 0.01% are plausible IFRs.

0.01% is likely not a plausible IFR estimate for the entire US. 0.1% is consistent with your back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Whether you know it or not, your calculation has error bars on it. Those error bars do not exclude 0.1%.

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

#189

Post by timr »

dilyevsky wrote: post #131
timr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I've read the entire paper, many times. Look at the predictions for the various intervention scenarios. They're not even close to reality (unless you count "+/- 80%" as "close to reality", I suppose...)

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

davidgay wrote: post #147
timr wrote: 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…

No. From the link I posted: "Infection fatality rates (IFRs) were higher in countries with older populations, such as Japan (1.09%, 95% Credible Interval [CrI] 0.94%-1.26%) and Italy (0.94%, 95% CrI 0.80%-1.08%), compared with countries with younger populations, such as Kenya (0.09%, 95% CrI 0.08%-0.10%), and Pakistan (0.16%, 95% CrI 0.14% – 0.19%) (Figure)." That's 0.1-1.1%, not 0.1-0.5%. And the initial context was…

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