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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

wired.com

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#101

Post by gowld »

neoflame wrote: post #69
danmaz74 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Couldn't be real" is a complete misinterpretation of the paper. The "medical establishment" asserts that many diseases are transmitted by aerosol (ie very small droplets), but many more - and especially those similar to covid-19 - are transmitted by larger droplets, which travel less far. This isn't anything trivial as your comment makes it look like.

Citation 3 of the linked paper is https://twitter.com/who/status/1243972193169616898 . I don't see how a tweet by the WHO beginning with "FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne" can be construed as anything but a denial that COVID-19 is airborne.

WHO is a political organization, not medical establishment. Chinese Communist Party has veto power over WHO's statements.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#102

Post by loeg »

giantg2 wrote: post #98
loeg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the context is industries and products quickly spun up in 2020. Those masks were basic cloth ones, not the surgical masks more common now.

There was a huge production jump for N95s and surgical masks in 2020, included companies that spun up and shipped potentially dangerous products (N95s by unheard of companies not actually being N95 compliant). Their usage is still up compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Ok? You can look at my original comment -- I'm talking about cloth ones. I'm not interested in arguing with you about the relative proportion of cloth masks and synthetic masks.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#103

Post by dahfizz »

jquery wrote: post #45
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #31

In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking' reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick, who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical c…

It's akin to a master caution alarm on a plane and the engines just cut out. Until there's more data on exactly what the issue is, pilots should generally follow the checklists. Avoidable accidents happen when pilots make assumptions about what is wrong (e.g., "oh my instruments must be incorrect") instead of following their checklists/training. Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made…

> Until we knew that surface transmission wasn't a serious vector, it made total sense to guard against it.

But at what cost? We knew that benzene is toxic. Wiping down every surface with a toxic chemical without knowing if it even helps against covid is much more of an emotional/fearful reaction than a rational one, IMO.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#104

Post by gowld »

loeg wrote: post #92
revelio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 "Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic."

> the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more nuanced statement that erases the nuance.

Unfortunately, you are incorrect, as a half-dozen comments in this thread have shared.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#105

Post by gowld »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #31

In all of these posts there is a strong 'what were they thinking' reaction. - remember hindsight. At the time, how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? It was a fast, dynamically changing situation, everyone was getting sick, who a the time could say 'yeah, people are dying, but YOLO, no need to sanitize your hands.' Lot of freaking armchair quarterbacks in the 'lets criticize the medical c…

Not "Everyone" was getting sick. An extremely small portion of the population getting sick can have a large impact, since most people are not sick, most of the time.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#106

Post by GeekyBear »

loeg wrote: post #92
revelio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 "Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic."

> the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more nuanced statement that erases the nuance.

>In March, W.H.O. denied outright that Covid-19 was airborne, posting on social media, “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” and calling it “misinformation.” We and our colleagues, scientists and engineers who have studied airborne particles for our entire careers, met with W.H.O. in April 2020 to express our concern that airborne transmission was important in the spread of COVID-19. W.H.O. vehemently rejected our suggestion and painted us as trespassers who did not understand what was happening in hospitals.

https://time.com/6162065/covid-19-airborne-transmission-conf...

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#107

Post by gowld »

acyou wrote: post #58

This issue is a wrecking ball being swung first this way, then the other way, to create division, hatred, polarization, radicalization and the feeling of being marginalized on all sides. Who benefits from consuming this article? Was it not mass media used as a primary vector to create the hysteria in the first place? And will the wheel not again soon turn, so that the criticized can criticize the criticizers from the…

Where is benzene in the Wired article?

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#108

Post by loeg »

GeekyBear wrote: post #95
loeg wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can remember scientists being accused of spreading "misinformation" for proposing that airborne spread best fit the available data. This is a much lower bar. You can always find a crank on twitter accusing something of being misinformation. The original claim I responded to was that the medical establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible. However, the actual take from the medical establishment was…

> The original claim I responded to was that the medical establishment claimed airborne transmission was impossible. The WHO literally made a blanket statement that Covid was NOT airborne. > FACT: COVID-19 is NOT airborne. The CDC also denied airborne spread for quite some time. >As the pandemic unfolded last year, infectious disease experts warned for months that both the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization wer…

The 4-word tweet (from March 2020) is clearly an oversimplification for people who are only willing to read 4 words. They're talking about their (wrong) belief that airborne transmission was not a significant vector, at a population level.

If you read charitably and look at their longer, contemporaneous statements, they say things like airborne spread is possible in some limited situations but not believed to be a significant vector of spread at a population level. (Still wrong, but a lot more nuanced.)

March 2020 was the first month the disease was declared a pandemic; it was very early on. We had a broad call to recognize airborne spread by July. It's worth skimming something like https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments... .

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#109

Post by Sunspark »

sargun wrote: post #76
loeg wrote: post #3

Tl;dr: ArtNaturals made hand sanitizer with very high levels of benzene (a carcinogen) and after a fire and runoff into the Dominguez Channel, produced a bunch of hydrogen sulfide (the "rotten eggs" smelling gas). When the FDA reimposed pre-pandemic sanitizer rules, companies were forced to dispose of the crap they produced under the lax rules. Some tried to do so by giving it away to schools or illegally dumping it…

I'm curious, where does the benzene come from? Isn't hand sanitizer just ethanol with scents added, and maybe a gelling agent?

A pet peeve of mine, I don't use public hand sanitizer because all the cheap stuff (probably the same stuff this article talks about) seems maniacally intent on adding really long-lasting fragrance to it. When I say long lasting, I don't mean an hour, I mean you can still smell the added fragrance the NEXT DAY despite washing your hands multiple times since. That stuff's got to be toxic.

Something that has fragrance this long-lasting is not a sanitizer, it's an odorant or perfuming agent. Sanitizer is not supposed to be a product that makes you smell and leave fragrance residues on surfaces.

Basic alcohol sanitizer is fine. It evaporates and then that is it.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#110

Post by loeg »

GeekyBear wrote: post #106
loeg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. I mean, I don't believe the WHO actually stated that in those terms. This is probably a paraphrase of a more nuanced statement that erases the nuance.

>In March, W.H.O. denied outright that Covid-19 was airborne, posting on social media, “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” and calling it “misinformation.” We and our colleagues, scientists and engineers who have studied airborne particles for our entire careers, met with W.H.O. in April 2020 to express our concern that airborne transmission was important in the spread of COVID-19. W.H.O. vehemently rejected our sugges…

I think you and others in this thread are reading that tweet significantly out of context.
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