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Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

publichealth.verily.com

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Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#111

Post by timr »

gernb wrote: post #109
timr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post holiday gathering spike is rather obvious. Not just for COVID but for everything. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It's not a "holiday gathering spike". It's literally the same respiratory pathogen pattern we've seen for as long as we've bothered to look: in the winter, as we go inside and the air becomes cool and dry, respiratory infections go up. The viruses evolved to work this way, because it's a great surv…

> in the winter, as we go inside and the air becomes cool and dry, respiratory infections go up. This winter is the cause the please explain Japan which had it's biggest spikes in summer

They didn't. They're having a big spike, right now [1]. It's going to end up being bigger than the summer wave. They had a big spike last winter, too, but they weren't testing as much then.

Comparing the absolute magnitude of these spikes is fraught, because they depend on the number of tests being conducted, (which was rapidly increasing over the course of last year), as well as the many other behavioral changes that were happening at the same time.

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/japan

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#112

Post by endisneigh »

sn0wf1re wrote: post #32
endisneigh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone sick should be staying home, not going into grocery stores with a mask on.

How else would they get food? Not everyone can afford to order in. Is your opinion that these people should just starve?

Ideally you have enough food in your fridge to last without daily trips to the grocery store, so no, not starving.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#113

Post by gjsman-1000 »

uhtred wrote: post #33
rajup wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masks are unlikely to have protected you much unless it’s a tight fitting n95 mask worn around the clock. This topic has been beaten to death on here, not sure why people continue to cling on to masks as anything other than security theater.

Masks are primarily for protecting other people, you cough and sneeze and breathe out infected water droplets into the mask- not other people's faces. Why do people like you have such anger about mask wearing?

> not other people's faces

Well, in that case, it's easy. Other people who are concerned can wear a mask, and said water droplets will land on their mask instead of their face. Problem solved, we have no conflict.

As for why we hate it, here's a good reason for me personally. I have to wear glasses, as I have an extreme prescription coupled with astigmatism. It's so bad LASIK is (or at least, was) high-risk. Wearing a mask with glasses is a miserable experience - you can't stop fogging them up without touching your mask every several minutes to adjust it, defeating the point because you're not supposed to touch it. In which case, wearing a mask (for me) is a self-defeating exercise. There are other reasons but that's my personal biggest one.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#114

Post by gernb »

rayiner wrote: post #91
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #13

I am continually surprised at how many people don’t wear masks at places like the grocery store even as cases are rising. I got covid over the summer and it was horrible! I lost two weeks of work which was a lot of money to lose, missed multiple dates with my partner I would have really enjoyed and felt totally isolated. Then I felt fatigue and brain fog for months afterwards. Afterwards I got the bivalent vaccine so…

For vaccinated individuals, being sick for two weeks is unusual. When I got covid the first time, before vaccines were available, I was sick less than a week. I had a few weeks of brain fog after that but it cleared up. I got it again last week and I was sick for only a day. Not any worse than any cold I’ve had before. Indeed I’ve had fewer sick days the last couple of years than I did the year my daughter started da…

No post body was provided.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#115

Post by version_five »

ampersandy wrote: post #100
timr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post holiday gathering spike is rather obvious. Not just for COVID but for everything. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It's not a "holiday gathering spike". It's literally the same respiratory pathogen pattern we've seen for as long as we've bothered to look: in the winter, as we go inside and the air becomes cool and dry, respiratory infections go up. The viruses evolved to work this way, because it's a great surv…

What about staying inside with cool/dry air causes these infections? Genuinely curious.

Sorry I don't have a link but I read few years ago that dry air typical of heated indoor spaces in winter means that virus (or maybe virus + moisture we breath out) stay suspended in the air longer

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#116

Post by tonetheman »

dxhdr wrote: post #47
Diederich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being sick two weeks is a very clear cost. Less clear are the long-term costs associated with long-covid. How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a mask most of the time when in public?

> How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a mask most of the time when in public? I tried it for a year and it's dehumanizing. Not sure how you'd rate that vs the unknown chance of long covid but I've made my choice.

Yes make sure to tell your doctor you think wearing a mask is before they work on you or you mother or your child. Tell them you think masks are dehuminizing.

Or just skip to what you really mean, tell your doctor who is going to operate on your or your child that you do not think they work.

Moron.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#117

Post by ABCLAW »

timr wrote: post #83
jeffbee wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are pants and shirts also symbols of fear and control?

If you're forced to wear them on your face, yes. Covering your face , as a primate, is not a natural thing to do. Our brains have huge areas dedicated to recognition of subtle differences in facial features. We're literally wired for facial recognition. More than almost any other feature of our bodies, our faces define us as individuals. Assuming that obscuring the face has zero cost is clearly wrong. I honestly can'…

>Covering your face, as a primate, is not a natural thing to do.

1) Neither is wearing pants or a shirt. 2) Something being 'natural' doesn't make it right.

>Assuming that obscuring the face has zero cost is clearly wrong.

It doesn't need to have zero cost in order to be the correct thing to do. The question is whether or not the trade-off is worthwhile. Let's saying masking always under all conditions is too much of an imposition, are there restrictions we can place that make the trade-off better?

For instance: Is masking in high density communal areas during respiratory disease seasons with an X drop in disease propagation worth not seeing people's faces in that setting for that time period.

To extrapolate this back to the pants/shirt distinction; human life would end in a generation if we weren't ever able to take off our pants and shirt as we would never have sex again, but the intolerability of that restriction doesn't make it socially accepted for me to rub my bare ass onto a bus seat.

We can't have a discussion about how best to adopt masks, pants, or shirts as a technology if the only way they'll be accepted is if they're always a pure benefit in any situation.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#118

Post by Erikun »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #92
kjksf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being killed by a falling brick is a very clear cost. How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a hard hat most of the time when in public? Talking about cost without normalizing for probability of prevention is meaningless yet you want to frame the discussion to be purely about (low) cost of wearing masks. We had a year of a pretty tough lockdown, most people wearing masks, distancing in grocery s…

Also, imagine if said hard hat caused unknown long-term effects by itself. We know, for a fact, that some plastic fibers from masks end up in the lungs permanently. What happens when they go there? Nobody knows. How many of them are there in the average person? Nobody knows. What are the long term effects? Nobody knows. How does it affect lung development in both short-term and long-term, particularly in young people…

I've never heard of that, if that is a fact it would be nice to include a reference.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#119

Post by jltsiren »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #92
kjksf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being killed by a falling brick is a very clear cost. How would you characterize the costs associated with wearing a hard hat most of the time when in public? Talking about cost without normalizing for probability of prevention is meaningless yet you want to frame the discussion to be purely about (low) cost of wearing masks. We had a year of a pretty tough lockdown, most people wearing masks, distancing in grocery s…

Also, imagine if said hard hat caused unknown long-term effects by itself. We know, for a fact, that some plastic fibers from masks end up in the lungs permanently. What happens when they go there? Nobody knows. How many of them are there in the average person? Nobody knows. What are the long term effects? Nobody knows. How does it affect lung development in both short-term and long-term, particularly in young people…

Disposable masks have been routinely used in healthcare since at least the 1960s. I would be extremely surprised if there are no studies of the long-term health effects of mask use. Especially since the people who could do such research are the ones who would suffer most from any adverse effects.

Re: Graph showing level of Covid, flu and RSV in US wastewater systems, by city

#120

Post by valarauko »

ampersandy wrote: post #100
timr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post holiday gathering spike is rather obvious. Not just for COVID but for everything. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. It's not a "holiday gathering spike". It's literally the same respiratory pathogen pattern we've seen for as long as we've bothered to look: in the winter, as we go inside and the air becomes cool and dry, respiratory infections go up. The viruses evolved to work this way, because it's a great surv…

What about staying inside with cool/dry air causes these infections? Genuinely curious.

Low relative humidity dries out the aerosol droplets faster before they have a chance to settle out of the air.
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