if nothing else, this story should put a stake in the heart of the idea that we can achieve "Zero Covid". If testing and quarantine didn't prevent an outbreak here, it never will.
Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
261–270 of 296 posts
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Belgium actually had the first winter expedition to the Antarctic in the late 1800s. Although it was mostly Belgian in name only and also a complete disaster, save for a commendable amount of scientific data being collected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Antarctic_Expedition The book "Madhouse at the End of the Earth" by Julian Sancton is a great read for this story of the first humans to spend a sun-less w…
You wouldn't have more recommendations about this topic, would you?
If the topic is early Antarctic exploration then I would highly recommend Roland Huntford's book 'Scott and Amundsen' which serves as a sort of autobiography of arctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, and their exhilarating race to discover the South Pole.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ineffective I don't think it's clear evidence of this, but you could definitely say it's not 100% effective. Whether it is useful is not something that you cannot determine from this story alone.
I think if you take the strictest possible quarantine and test paradigms and even those are failing, its certainly fair to call them ineffective.
I don’t know. If a medicine cures 99 % of all cases (or even 10 %) would you say it’s ineffective? I’d say it’s effective, but depending on the your overall goal, not effective enough (if you’d like to call it ineffective, it would be ineffective with respect to a certain macro outcome, not with respect to individual cases). At some minuscule percentage (let’s say 0,1 %) I would probably be tempted to actually starting to call it ineffective.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html > The MMR vaccine is very safe and effective. Two doses of MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles; one dose is about 93% effective. Prevention of Measles, Rubella, Congenital Rubella Syndrome, and Mumps, 2013 Summary Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at https://www.jstor.org/stable/24832555 > One dose of me…
Thanks for the links. “About 93%” is much more sensible then 93%. As for vitamins there was an old study [1] : Child mortality due to measles is 200 to 400 times greater in malnourished children in less developed countries than those in developed ones. In addition, measles brings about consumption of nutrients in marginally nourished children, so they will also do worse if not supplemented during infection. [1] https…
I strongly disagree - ashtonkem's description is quite sensible. I don't expect HN comments to be more precise than medical professionals.
That is, it's easy to find scholarly papers published by doctors which don't add the "about" like:
"Measles vaccine is highly effective, with 1 dose being 93% effective and 2 doses being 97% effective at preventing measles." from "Measles Outbreak — Minnesota April–May 2017" by authors from the Minnesota Department of Health, at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5687591/
"Based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, one dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against MeV, 78% effective against mumps virus (MuV), and 97% effective against rubella." by authors from The Ohio State University at https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/12/e2026153118.full.pd... .
Yes, I already mentioned malnutrition as a known factor.
I asked for substantiation of your statement "insufficient vitamin C being especially bad."
You cited reference doesn't even mention vitamin C.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the links. “About 93%” is much more sensible then 93%. As for vitamins there was an old study [1] : Child mortality due to measles is 200 to 400 times greater in malnourished children in less developed countries than those in developed ones. In addition, measles brings about consumption of nutrients in marginally nourished children, so they will also do worse if not supplemented during infection. [1] https…
I strongly disagree - ashtonkem's description is quite sensible. I don't expect HN comments to be more precise than medical professionals. That is, it's easy to find scholarly papers published by doctors which don't add the "about" like: "Measles vaccine is highly effective, with 1 dose being 93% effective and 2 doses being 97% effective at preventing measles." from "Measles Outbreak — Minnesota April–May 2017" by au…
I was wrong with vitamin C, it was vitamin A deficiency that is correlated with severe symptoms, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28282701/
And given that precise numbers like 93% is meaningless. One should either give the range or at least describe the population.
And it turned out 93% was not coming from the study in https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/12/e2026153118.full.pd..., they just reference https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5863094/ , but that nowhere mention the number 93% and it’s abstract give much more sensible data:
Delivery of the two doses of vaccine needed to achieve >90% immunity is accomplished by routine immunization of infants at 9–15 months of age followed by a second dose delivered before school entry or by periodic mass vaccination campaigns. B
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#266Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
There is this old grandma theory that "don't run outside with wet hair, you'll catch a cold". Then we learned that viruses cannot spread like that, and so that old theory is basically invalid. But some time ago I read somewhere that this theory might still hold true somehow, because our nose stores all kinds of viruses, and they might burst out when we are weakened. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this might c…
The body's immune system may be keeping viruses in check, in part why after the COVID mRNA vaccine there's been a reported uptick of other viruses being able to take hold - e.g. bypassing and brute forcing to overly focus on directions of mRNA seems to have unintended consequences, and I'm also curious how or if these "unrelated" illnesses were observed for and kept track of in the official clinic trials or not.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree - ashtonkem's description is quite sensible. I don't expect HN comments to be more precise than medical professionals. That is, it's easy to find scholarly papers published by doctors which don't add the "about" like: "Measles vaccine is highly effective, with 1 dose being 93% effective and 2 doses being 97% effective at preventing measles." from "Measles Outbreak — Minnesota April–May 2017" by au…
I was wrong with vitamin C, it was vitamin A deficiency that is correlated with severe symptoms, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28282701/ And given that precise numbers like 93% is meaningless. One should either give the range or at least describe the population. And it turned out 93% was not coming from the study in https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/12/e2026153118.full.pd... , they just reference https://www.nc…
Do you expect HN comments to use more accurate language than medical researchers use in published papers?
I don't.
So describing the difference between "93%" and "about 93%" as 'much more sensible', in this context, seems excessively nitpicky.
Even more so given that you got the wrong vitamin and it took you a couple of tries until you got the right citation.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#268And some people still insist that if we just locked down the world for x time the virus would go away.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#269Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
I'd wager that virus infectivity decay is strictly stochastic in both time and dosage, that there isn't any truly safe exposure greater than absolute zero or truly safe time/distance when sharing air with infected. There are just thresholds of scientific perception where we say good enough. That would mean that yes, there is an infinitesimally small chance to get infected from a doorknob that hasn't been touched in three weeks, but those odds are so low that with eight billion people and two years of pandemic it's unlikely to ever have happened (and if it did we'd certainly not know about it). Living in quarantine, eventually getting driven to the airfield, plenty of infinitesimally unlikely exposure opportunities.
Re: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid despite strict measures
#270Viruses are interesting things. I once enjoyed a case study about an outbreak of common cold on an Antarctic base that only happened after 17 weeks of isolation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/ (I'm no virologist but given that the common cold didn't seem to be impacted by the severe lockdowns in the UK at all, whereas flu was, I've gotten the - uneducated - feeling the cold is a bit like some S…
There is this old grandma theory that "don't run outside with wet hair, you'll catch a cold". Then we learned that viruses cannot spread like that, and so that old theory is basically invalid. But some time ago I read somewhere that this theory might still hold true somehow, because our nose stores all kinds of viruses, and they might burst out when we are weakened. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about this might c…
In sports, there's a parallel to the old grandma theory that is usually called the "open window theory" (somewhat difficult to google in english, much easier in german where the english term "open window" only exists as a loan word for this particular meaning) which says that after a tough training, some defenses aren't as strong as they usually are. That theory is not entirely uncontested, but if it holds some truth the same mechanism could very well be at play in the wet hair scenario.
(Note how even your wording of the grandma theory is surprisingly in line with infection principles: the wet hair makes you "catch" a cold, from someone else, not directly causing the cold)