New Research Links Air Pollution To Higher Coronavirus Death Rates (nytimes.com) 81
Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country, according to a new nationwide study that offers the first clear link between long-term exposure to pollution and Covid-19 death rates. From a report: In an analysis of 3,080 counties in the United States, researchers at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in air known as PM 2.5 were associated with higher death rates from the disease. For weeks, public health officials have surmised a link between dirty air and death or serious illness from Covid-19, which is caused by the coronavirus. The Harvard analysis is the first nationwide study to show a statistical link, revealing a "large overlap" between Covid-19 deaths and other diseases associated with long-term exposure to fine particulate matter. "The results of this paper suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes," the authors wrote.
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It should not be surprising in any case. Pollution exacerbates all lung and breathing-related diseases.
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It should not be surprising in any case. Pollution exacerbates all lung and breathing-related diseases.
Smoking raises death rates by a factor of 6 and complications by a factor of 14.
It is not surprising that pollution has the same effect.
We have not seen the ultimate horrors of COVID19 yet. Wait until it hits poor countries where nobody is vaccinated against TB, 50%+ smoke and air pollution is off the scale.
That by the way explains the death rates in Iran and Northern Italy. Both have problems with smoking AND pollution.
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Re:This was known in December (Score:5, Insightful)
You're just mad because the hippies were right. Pollution somehow became a partisan issue, and your side doesn't like to believe anything the other side says. So when they say "Scientists tell us air pollution is bad, m'kay?" you're all like "Nuh uh, you're not the boss of me, air pollution is rad! I'm sucking down diesel smoke from my coal-rolling monster truck right now, YUM!"
Re:This was known in December (Score:4, Insightful)
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Hippies? You mean the people who you can't go visit because their home is perpetually in a fog of sweet-smelling shit they love to inhale, that kind of Hippies?
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Like my parents. Hippies with graduate degrees. Oh sure, they lived on a commune back in the day, but it was land they purchased with their own money. Nowadays they live down the street from my sister so they can help with her baby.
They don't really dig patchouli, thankfully. Never have. And they can't really smoke pot anymore, it makes them all loopy. Last time my mom tried any she fell asleep under the coffee table.
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Issue the dems stole from the Republicans. Just pull up who created the EPA. That's Richard Nixon. Republicans championed the environment for decades before the Dems did. Then they do what they always do - lie, lie, lie more to the point people believe the lie that Dems are for the environment.
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The tinfoil hat wearer in me would say that our governments kinda anticipated that something like that would happen and that this is the reason for the incredible anti-smoking campaigning that went on in the past decade or two.
I mean, seriously, before 2000 nobody gave half a fuck about smoking, passive-smoking or anything. Despite having known that smoking causes cancer for decades. Only since SARS really became a thing, it got some traction with governments worldwide.
Re:This was known in December (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, seriously, before 2000 nobody gave half a fuck about smoking, passive-smoking or anything
Not exactly true. US Surgeon General Luther Terry issued his warning about cigarettes in 1964, and warnings appeared on cigarettes in 1966. What happened was that the tobacco industry waged a fierce disinformation campaign right from the time the warnings were proposed right up until 1998.
In 1998 the Tobacco Industry Master Settlement in 1998 shut down the disinformation campaign and forced the industry to publish the internal documents found in discovery. That accounts for the dramatic shift in US public attitudes toward smoking since 2000.
But if *nobody* gave a fuck about smoking before 2000, 46 states' attorneys general would not have launched a suit against the industry in the first place.
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Wuhan might be a pollution hell-hole by US standards, but it doesn't even make the list of top ten polluted cities in China. Using your logic, which ignores the fact that the infection emerged first in Wuhan, we have to conclude that dirtier Chinese cities fared better.
Contrary to what people seem to think, it is important to check to see that a story that "stands to reason" in one place also holds true in different places.
Not really surprising. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly... this is both perfectly logical, and fits with the data amazingly well.
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I think it's the other way 'round. COVID is a disease that attacks your lungs, and if they are already damaged by other means and your lungs are already working at capacity just to keep you alive because years of pollution, smoking and whatnot damaged them to the point where you're a candidate for COPD, any additional damage COVID does pushes you over the edge.
That might also be a good explanation why small children are curiously immune to it all. Their lungs are usually in pristine condition.
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I'm curious, did those children have some kind of respiratory distress before contracting the disease? I.e. did their lungs not work properly?
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Local air pollution is also linked to population density and to not giving a crap about the people. Besides also death and all kinds of respiratory trouble.
Populated areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Air pollution has a high correlation with population density. Areas with dense populations are seeing the most COVID-19 infections. The hospitals in these urban areas are stressed to capacity or beyond, which results in a reduction of the resources (staff, ventilators, etc) available for patient care. That directly results in a higher mortality rate.
Not saying that air pollution isn't a factor, especially since this is a respiratory illness and air pollution damages the respiratory system. I'm just pointing out that there are almost certainly many other factors involved here.
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Re:Populated areas (Score:4)
Experimental control (Score:3)
They found an area with high population density and low particulates?
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Mainly it just kind of bugs me that on every /. article everybody jumps to the assumption that the researchers are stupid and didn't account for something or other, even if the article says they did. (But it has always been this way and I've given up thinking it will ever stop.)
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temperature inversion (Score:2)
A natural experiment does not need to cover the full range. And we definitely have urban populations with excessive particulate capture, due to the meteorological phenomena of temperature inversion.
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Yes, the best hospitals are in urban areas so of course they will be stressed to capacity.
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From TFS:
"We adjust by population size, hospital beds, number of individuals tested, weather, and socioeconomic and behavioral variables including, but not limited to obesity and smoking. We include a random intercept by state to account for potential correlation in counties within the same state."
They published their data on Github (https://github.com/wxwx1993/PM_COVID) and the text is available for free (https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/covid-pm/files/pm_and_covid_mortality.pdf) but I can't get it to
You must be new to Slashdot (Score:2)
To have a sensible response to the typical lame story getting posted.
I don't know about the rest of the world (Score:2)
The researchers seem to have considered density:
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Might explain Detroit. Population density is actually not that high there due to the massive loss of population over the last few decades. But air quality? Ehhh.
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Well, that can be tested, and according to TFA they did take that into account. There are actually large cities in countries that do take environmental issues serious and hence are suffering from lower pollution and have, unlike Chinese towns, air you can actually see through...
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While it is often true that high population density area have high pollution levels, that is not always the case.
In California, two of the most polluted areas are in the huge central valley and in the southern Cal "Inland Empire" where pollutants blown from coastal cities and pollution from farming collide to produce very high pollution levels with moderate to low population density.
As I don't currently subscribe to the Times, I will admit that I have not read the full article, let alone the actual paper. I
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This is not necessarily so true in the United States, which has rigorous air quality standards. Other factors like geography, climate, urban sprawl, and industry matter more.
It's easy enough to verify by looking at a list of the most densely populated cities in the US and a list of the most air-polluted cities in the US.
Here are the cities with the worst particulate pollution:
1 Bakersfield-Delano, CA
2 Fresno-Madera-Hanford, CA
3 Fairbanks, AK
4 San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA
5 Missoula, MT
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lol you think people who write these studies do not understand the incredibly basic points you just made? Allowing for such confounding factors is at the very foundation of such research. smh. This is Harvard, genius.
The new reality (Score:5, Informative)
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Squalor is In!
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Good timing (Score:5, Insightful)
Great timing for Herr Drumpf to be gutting the EPA.
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Oh... and also, great timing to be loosening auto emission standards.
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Oh well, I guess they just don't want to export anything.
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I refer to this [thehill.com] and this [theguardian.com].
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Also, your math is a bit wonky. By my reckoning, $8.8B in FY2019 is less than $10.3B in FY2010. Perhaps you are unclear on the meaning of "all-time high"?
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I refer to this [thehill.com] and this [theguardian.com].
With so much of the world's economy shut down, and all the people on lockdown, I thought this would result in cleaner air and less pollution, and a healthier environment could help us with the fight against COVID-19. Silly me.
Now, here you are pointing out Trump rolled back Obama's car pollution standards and suspended environmental law enforcement. Economics trumps health, wealth trumps all else.
Every chance he gets, Trump is making things worse, not better.
I'm starting to think Trump is a disease in
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I mean, if you call rolling it back to what it was doing in 2008 "gutting" it, okay.
OMG this is EARTH SHATTERING! (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Who would have thought that a virus that mainly kills by causing a cytokine storm in the lungs [sciencedaily.com] would be exacerbated by air pollution?
The paper you linked to isn't about Coronavirus, and it was published in 2014.
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I guess you're not aware that the big danger with CoVID-19 is cytokine storms [newscientist.com], where your immunity goes into hyperdrive and basically floods your lungs [emcrit.org], requiring intubation.
And "coronavirus" is a big catch-all, including things like MERS and SARS - which both pre-date 2014. Your use of "coronavirus" to really mean CoVID-19 is very sloppy...
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So I found this, which suggests stopping the cytokine storm does not protect against influenza [nih.gov],
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Science isn't about what seems plausible to you. It's about evidence.
Odd... (Score:3)
LA has the worst pollution in the country with a smog cloud you can literally see with the naked eye on approach for miles but I thought they were having better outcomes than NY.
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In fairness, there is an emergency going on and a slightly lower bar is being permitted to allow for faster publication.
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The problem is much larger in New York and running about a week ahead of California in terms of peaking. That's why New York is having worse outcomes, it's more overwhelmed.
New York 16,387 cases currently in hospitals of which 4504 are in the ICU.
California has 2504 patients currently hospitalized of which 1085 are currently in the ICU.
I don't think this means California patients are sicker than New York patients, I think it means New York has already exceeded the number of ICU beds available, meaning wors
Well, to counter that shock (Score:2)
Quick, light another cigarette.
When you have a COVID-19 (Score:2)
Hammer every respiratory ailment looks like a nail.
Hows that city living doing for you (Score:2)
Higher infection due to packed in like sardines.
High blood pressure due to fast life cycle of living in the city and associated life style. - More crime. - Cost of living - population density. - Job tensions.
Controlled for population density? (Score:2)
Is that before or after controlling for population density?
Not the least bit surprising (Score:2)
This would explain why children aren't affected (Score:2)
What kills you is when it gets into your lower respiratory system. But nobody knows why it does for some and doesn't for others. Maybe it's the pollution that makes that possible. For example your lower respiratory system might just be coated in crud from decades of soot that helps the virus get down there.
well isn't that just special (Score:1)
Fill out my paperwork, because as soon as tRump decides to make more money, I'm a dead man.
See how this works? (Score:1)
Smoke pollution in Australia (Score:2)
Well, there goes the majority of the population of Australia. What a one/two punch, eh?. First we cop the worst air pollution in the world [dailysabah.com], and then corona arrives to finish us off after bathing in PM2.5.
It's a conspiracy, man!