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The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

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Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#171

Post by Scoundreller »

revelio wrote: post #47
danmaz74 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was very clear from where? https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

It was clear by March 2020 when the passengers on the Diamond Princess were all locked down in their cabins and COVID didn't care at all, managing to infect people all over the ship essentially at random. This is only possible if it is able to spread long distances via the air; if transmission were droplet or surface based that would have ended the outbreak immediately. Please don't cite the CDC for anything, they're…

> were all locked down in their cabins and COVID didn't care at all, managing to infect people all over the ship essentially at random.

I wonder how much of this could be explained by multiple day incubation times and an asymptomatic infection being spread to cabin-mates.

> This is only possible if it is able to spread long distances via the air

Or people infected others filtering in and out of the same close quarters that are poorly ventilated (e.g. elevators and public bathrooms). Doesn’t even require you to be in there at the same time if it can float around for a few hours.

My (still valid) joke about the pandemic is to always be upwind of whomever you’re in contact with. 6’/2M apart didn’t matter.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#172

Post by fknorangesite »

dylan604 wrote: post #128
perardi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, repurposing Everclear got me through the pandemic. I cut it with Diet Coke, and a splash of lime, and drank it to help sanitize my system of coronavirus particles. Kept me COVID-free. I think. I don’t really remember much of the past 3 years for some reason, drinking that every day…but no nagging cough!

How's your eyesight?

Is the joke here that you are conflating Everclear and [shitty] moonshine?

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#173

Post by FrustratedMonky »

hedora wrote: post #143
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…

This has nothing to do with hindsight. We've known for decades that hand sanitizer (and antibiotic soap) kills off the beneficial bacteria on your hands, and also dries out skin, increasing the percentage of pathogens that survive contact with skin, and also increasing the percentage that manage to get past skins' protective barriers. We also knew that coronavirus was airborne well before 2019. The medical and microb…

If the people identified to deal with pandemics, are mere 'historians', then maybe the terms are wrong, or where you studied Epidemiology had a different take on it.

Right from wiki, this sure sounds like Epidemiologist are the ones to make the call. : Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.

It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences.[1]

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#174

Post by dahfizz »

hn976827 wrote: post #146
dahfizz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most hand sanitizers were Ethanol or Rubbing Alcohol You can't know that. The regulations and testing requirements were suspended, so companies were free to use benzene and nobody would know. We already know for sure that some companies did use benzene, and its not hard to imagine companies switching to a cheaper, lower grade source for their alcohol. In any case, the government simultaneously saying "Its okay to p…

Had this pandemic turned out to kill 10% of the global population then it would definitely have been the right move. Turns out, that didn't happen. Because we were lucky regarding lethality, regarding contageousness, regardin speed of vaccine development. In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time. I worry about the real thing hitting someday. When the discussions start aga…

> In hindsight, no biggy, how dare they made everybody sanitize their hands all the time.

I think you're really underplaying this. If the FDA hadn't suspended the rules about benzene, then fine. No biggy.

But the government literally encouraged people to slather themselves with carcinogens on a hunch that it might help with COVID.

I would even be fine with it if we had proof that hand sanitizer was the most effective way to stop COVID, and then the FDA relaxed the regulations secure in the knowledge that it would save lives.

But COVID is airborne, hand sanitizer does basically nothing to protect against it, and people are going to die from leukemia as a result of all this for no reason.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#175

Post by FrustratedMonky »

hedora wrote: post #143
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…

This has nothing to do with hindsight. We've known for decades that hand sanitizer (and antibiotic soap) kills off the beneficial bacteria on your hands, and also dries out skin, increasing the percentage of pathogens that survive contact with skin, and also increasing the percentage that manage to get past skins' protective barriers. We also knew that coronavirus was airborne well before 2019. The medical and microb…

Sounds like you also have a 'loose' interpretation of a 'cold'.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#176

Post by fknorangesite »

eastbound wrote: post #127
loeg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> clearly an oversimplification for people who are only willing to read 4 words It’s a lie. There are no excuses. It’s false.

People can be wrong without lying.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#177

Post by FrustratedMonky »

pessimizer wrote: post #126
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…

This "hindsight" distraction can literally be used to excuse any mistake. It always involves completely dismissing a large group of experts who were right at the time, and for all the right reasons. > how were they supposed to know, by looking into their crystal ball? They certainly pretended that they knew hard enough to react in an extreme way.

The 'hindsight' does come into play. At the beginning of quarantine, they still didn't know what was happening, some countries were having 10% mortality, people were dying, bodies were stacking up. But, oh, so sorry we jumped the gun, next time we'll let it rampage before doing anything.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#178

Post by fknorangesite »

vxNsr wrote: post #142
rtsil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still use them (and masks). I haven't had a cold, the flu or any of the usual seasonal sicknesses in 3 years, and this spring my pollen allergy was nowhere to be seen. My quality of life is significantly better ever since I started using them. Washing my hands for 30 seconds at least also helps.

I had a lot of coworkers say this all the time and yet they would still call in sick from time to time…there’s a lot of confirmation bias that makes people blind to their own experiences.

Calling in sick is a lot different than actually being sick. Especially if you happen to work in a place with use-it-or-lose-it sick days.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#179

Post by NotYourLawyer »

acyou wrote: post #158
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recommended buying isopropyl alcohol. They did not recommend buying fuel grade ethanol.

That's right. But the time, isopropyl alcohol was expensive and unavailable enough that people were getting into that business too. And the fastest movers, and most successful, would have been the hustlers. Awhile back, I noticed that a local liquor distillery was also selling hand sanitizer. I didn't think about it at the time, but I guess that would probably have been a pretty reliable source.

Yeah, but the production of IPA doesn’t lend itself to benzene contamination. I’m also not sure I believe that a bunch of IPA factories were springing up overnight—you can’t make it with yeast and a still.

Re: The explosive legacy of the hand sanitizer boom

#180

Post by FrustratedMonky »

psychlops wrote: post #152
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 was fast and dynamic only because the rulebook was thrown out and created on the fly. There was precedent and strategy. Hindsight is being accurately used to review what happened and correctly criticize. The same would happen in the technical community if there were a breach and procedures were ignored and made up based on hunches. The medical community does not get a pass.

I think a lot of people knew how to respond, its just they were fired.

:: Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

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