Social Distancing Is Not Enough (theatlantic.com) 270
We will need a comprehensive strategy to reduce the sort of interactions that can lead to more infections. The Atlantic: COVID-19 has mounted a sustained attack on public life, especially indoor life. Many of the largest super-spreader events took place inside -- at a church in South Korea, an auditorium in France, a conference in Massachusetts. The danger of the indoors is more than anecdotal. A Hong Kong paper awaiting peer review [PDF] found that of 7,324 documented cases in China, only one outbreak occurred outside -- during a conversation among several men in a small village. The risk of infection indoors is almost 19 times higher than in open-air environments, according to another study [PDF] from researchers in Japan. Appropriately, just about every public indoor space in America has been shut down or, in the case of essential businesses such as grocers, adapted for social-distancing restrictions. These closures have been economically ruinous, transforming large swaths of urban and suburban life into a morbid line of darkened windows.
Today, states are emerging from the lockdown phase of the crisis and entering a queasy period of reopening. But offices, schools, stores, theaters, restaurants, bars, gyms, fitness centers, and museums will have no semblance of normalcy until we learn how to be safe -- and feel safe -- inside. To open these spaces, we must be guided by science and expertise. Fortunately for us, researchers are discovering the secrets of how COVID-19 spreads with a combination of clever modeling and detective work. Before we review the relevant studies and draw out lessons for the future of the great indoors, a brief word of humility. Our understanding of this disease is dynamic. Today's conventional wisdom could be tomorrow's busted myth. Think of these studies not as gospels, but as clues in a gradually unraveling mystery.
Today, states are emerging from the lockdown phase of the crisis and entering a queasy period of reopening. But offices, schools, stores, theaters, restaurants, bars, gyms, fitness centers, and museums will have no semblance of normalcy until we learn how to be safe -- and feel safe -- inside. To open these spaces, we must be guided by science and expertise. Fortunately for us, researchers are discovering the secrets of how COVID-19 spreads with a combination of clever modeling and detective work. Before we review the relevant studies and draw out lessons for the future of the great indoors, a brief word of humility. Our understanding of this disease is dynamic. Today's conventional wisdom could be tomorrow's busted myth. Think of these studies not as gospels, but as clues in a gradually unraveling mystery.
We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Interesting)
Japan has been asking people to keep indoor spaces well ventilated, the theory being that it prevents micro droplets hanging around in the air for so long, similar to outdoors. I'd love to know how effective that is but I couldn't immediately see an studies looking at it.
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Studies like that take a long time.
We have to go by other illnesses.
I'm not going to hunt out the studies, but one of the Oregon doctors running our response was saying that ventilation makes a big difference in illnesses that spread in a similar way, like the flu.
But you don't actually need medical studies, you just need engineering data on air flow and turnover in an enclosed space, and you can find out that in large supermarkets, box stores, nicer offices, etc., you have increased air turnover and the ai
Selection Bias (Score:3)
the theory being that it prevents micro droplets hanging around in the air for so long, similar to outdoors
Outside there is wind that can spread the droplets further meaning that you may not have an easily identifiable event that researchers can pinpoint as the source of your infection. They may not hang around in the air next to the source but they will remain in the air. Generally, indoor events inside are better documented: you know who attended them and when they happened. You do not know all the people you happened to walk by on a street nor is it easy to trace them.
This can result in selection bias. Fo
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I'm not sure you can look at a place that has done X successfully and declare that "X works". There has been significant differences in success in the US between states that have implemented similar isolation measures around the same time.
The following states have seen clear and sustained reductions in new cases over the past 4 weeks (fastest to slowest): New York,New Jersey,Massachusetts,Pennsylvania,Michigan,Connecticut,,Colorado,Rhode Island.
The following states have shown clear and sustained increases i
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Informative)
This is disingenuous. I live in Texas; our "lockdown" was never anything like New Jersey, (where the rest of my family lives.)
We don't have mandated masks in stores, they do. Our lockdown was really soft compared to them. We let the lady who opened her salon early in Dallas slide, New Jersey fined not just the owner of a gym that opened early, but the customers who refused to disburse as well. And most importantly, we started opening things back up three weeks ago now, and most everyone went back to acting like normal as soon as that happened. NJ is just now starting to ease up a bit.
You're comparing apples to oranges, so you can't draw the kinds of conclusions you're try to.
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customers who refused to disburse
I'm pretty sure they call a customer who doesn't disburse a "thief" in Texas. I don't believe they simply fine them.
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The conclusion I'm drawing is that we all may say we're doing "X", but in fact we're doing different things.
The common thread among the high reduction states is that they were hit hard early. I live in one of those states, and voluntary compliance with restrictions is extremely high. I run into people in the middle of the woods and nearly all of them are wearing masks, even though it's not even mandated for outdoors.
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I'm saying is the hard parts are political and cultural. I didn't know Texas didn't have a mask requirement, but I presume that's not a decision based on some kind evidence-based evaluation that transmission is somehow different in Texas than in New Jersey. It's a political difference. Likewise reports from people I know in high growth states with mask mandates report low levels of compliance. That's cultural.
We are where we are not because we didn't know what to do, but because what he had to do was p
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Insightful)
Non-medical masks are hardly effective.
I don't think that is true. This misconception is caused by people thinking the mask is helping themselves, but masks are actually for helping everyone else. And for that they actually are pretty effective. Not perfect of course but it has a big impact.
Medical masks are good enough to help the wearer, but that isn't what most of the population is going for when wearing those masks.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that is true. This misconception is caused by people thinking the mask is helping themselves, but masks are actually for helping everyone else. And for that they actually are pretty effective. Not perfect of course but it has a big impact.
Best analogy I've heard is to imagine your breath on a cold day when you can see it. That is water vapor droplets you are exhaling while you breathe, talk, etc. If you have ever worn a scarf in the winter you can see the effect it has. Some droplets still leak out, but their effective range is reduced substantially.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
Best analogy I've heard is to imagine your breath on a cold day when you can see it. That is water vapor droplets you are exhaling while you breathe, talk, etc. If you have ever worn a scarf in the winter you can see the effect it has. Some droplets still leak out, but their effective range is reduced substantially.
The best analogy I've heard is to imagine everybody runs around naked. If someone pees on you, you get wet right away. If you're wearing pants, some pee will get through, but not as much. But if the guy who pees is also wearing pants, the pee stays with him and you don't get wet at all.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Interesting)
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yes it for helping others but the reality is that in proper masking does not do that.
The entire is to catch micro droplets (smaller than the mask will actually filter) travel great distances and get on others and surfaces. The mask is to reduce the velocity and cause these things to fall down faster. However if you wear one of those 'vented' masks you actually force your breath out the vent at higher velocity sending droplets further! Lose masks even cloth ones that don't close against the cheek may send
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are all concerns and part of the reason why medical professionals don't claim everyone can act as normal as long as they have a mask on. But they are recommending for us to wear masks because overall it has a significant positive effect on slowing the spread of air-borne viruses. Masks are still quite effective even as worn by the average person, just not perfectly effective.
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Yes, any mask helps prevent the spread of the virus, even if it isn't protecting the wearer, it is protecting others around them.
Every bit helps
It's not even about "herd immunity" at this point - the less infections, the less the virus has a chance to mutate, the fewer other people will spread it. Masks are the only way to achieve this other than complete lockdown.
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Which IS a large part of the problem for the public.
Think about it...the #1 Priority of most people is "How can I protect MYSELF and how do I survive".
Their #2 thought is then about protecting others.
This is normal....and once they hear that these common masks really don't do much to help THEM...well, sometimes #2 falls through the cracks.
If #1 ==
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Well, apparently, large majorities of the American public understand the issue enough to get that wearing masks is important enough as lockdown is eased. The only ones who don't think so are the ones who are either stupid enough, selfish enough, or so concerned about appearing tough that they're willing to risk the rest of us.
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Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:4, Insightful)
False, a loose-fitting bandana should easily get you past 35%.
If you tie the edges properly it should be as effective as a pillowcase, which is about 60%.
https://smartairfilters.com/en... [smartairfilters.com]
You seem to have a bit of an irrational hangup about "100%" which is silly because it is an unattainable absolute. Because absolutes are not possible, you should have already known that less than 100% effectiveness is the goal. The goal is the real improvement we can make, not an imaginary improvement we can't make. Reducing your exposure 50% is huge and that is what a typical cloth covering can do.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-medical masks are better than no mask at all. The only worry is that they might provide too much of a sense of security and lead to recklessness.
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Given the range of recklessness already visible in the community from unmasked persons, this hardly seems like a real risk.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true at all. I was in a store the other day, and I heard someone coughing, behind me, a rumbling, juicy cough. I turned around to see what Typhoid Mary/Mike was near me and I saw it was a guy - wearing a mask. His face was red too. I don't know why he was out and about. The mask most assuredly prevent a cloud of infected droplets from spraying.
Second point: I do not think people appreciate how much spittle they spray when merely talking, much less coughing or sneezing. A simple mask will go far to limit that spray.
So, even if you don't have an N95, wearing something, even a cloth mask, in public, will help reduce the public health hazard, thus quite possibly saving a life, or saving some serious suffering. [cnn.com]
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Non-medical (or rather, non-N95 or better) masks help a lot. If everyone is wearing it cuts the transmissability of COVID--19 by 80%.
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Insightful)
The masks are a bit of a problem. The medical ones require knowledge in use, and ... depend on scarce resources and training.
What happened is that laypeople, such as yourself, misunderstood the context of some knowledge and applied it unthinkingly to a new context.
The context in which your information was valid is where workers are working with dangerous chemicals and can be injured by any amount of exposure. Or at least, the risk of injury due to exposure begins at a low level of exposure; or there is merely no safe level of exposure to the chemical. In this context, even the slightest leak in the mask for a few seconds is a failure of the personal protective equipment.
However, none of that is the same for protecting against infectious disease. In this context, you can't actually protect yourself to the same level in the first place, and partial protection is more valuable. In a factory chemical exposure situation, if the PPE isn't effective enough, you can shut down the factory to protect the workers. So you can demand some high level of success at preventing exposure. But with an infectious disease, that's not the case. You can't fully protect any one individual. And if the mask leaks, most likely nothing bad happened. It isn't at like standing in a room with dangerous chemicals in the air, when any unprotected breath causes some level of damage. Instead, the rate of protection simply lowers the speed that the disease spreads. Which is all the mask can do in the first place! So even imperfect masks are completely effective; they slow the spread.
Context matters, don't port your knowledge to a new platform without good testing of the logic in the new context.
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Homemade cloth masks are as effective as paper surgical masks in stopping spit flying out of your mouth, therefore protecting the public from being infected. Consider that the disposable paper masks that don't exactly seal against one's face are considered good enough to protect vulnerable surgery patients from the doctors' mouth germs.
Maybe you're thinking about N95+ respirator masks, for "protecting yourself". Those are not useful (or worth the cost) for the general public. They don't filter outgoing air
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You might be interested to see something like this: https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/hk... [fightcovid19.hku.hk]
Long story short, a cage full of COVID-19 infected hamsters was placed next to a cage full of healthy hamsters. After one week, the previously-healthy hamsters were checked for infection. The experiment was performed three times with the following results:
(1) Without any barrier between them (i.e. the control group), 2/3 of the healthy hamsters were sick after a week
(2) With a surgical mask close to the healthy hamsters (as
Re:We know what works, masks and testing/trace (Score:5, Informative)
The public has also NOT seen any reliable data on exactly how many people are dying from Convid-19. Someone who dies of Cancer and happens to test positive for the virus did not necessarily die of the virus.
That's true, but the evidence is that that's a very thing. In particular, we can look at excess deaths compared to the number of deaths the same time of year last year or the previous year. This data suggests that most countries, including the US, are actually undercounting COVID deaths https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html [nytimes.com] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e5.htm [cdc.gov] https://voxeu.org/article/excess-mortality-england-european-outlier-covid-19-pandemic [voxeu.org].
Air cleaning (Score:4, Interesting)
Hospitals, dentist's offices, etc. have UV air sanitizers. Would piping air to the roof to be run through clear (polycarbonate?) ducting be effective at sanitizing the air? Obviously there are a lot of other considerations like whether the air goes past other patrons' faces before it gets to the vent, I only want to know whether the air could theoretically be cleaned in this fashion.
Nobody wants to eat in a paint booth, probably, but a downdraft air system would ostensibly do the trick of not spreading germs from one person to the next. Perhaps such systems could be installed in future waiting rooms and lobbies.
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Don't see why it couldn't, in theory only. But buildings are deliberately not air-tight. They need to breathe, or you get mold in your walls. There's soffit vents all over usually.
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No, quite the opposite. CO2 is denser than O2. Now, nitrogen is the bulk, and it's the lightest, but you're not significantly changing its mass fraction, and it's generally miscible with O2. The people at the bottom are going to suffocate iff you stuck them in an air-tight building and managed to convince the air to separate itself out by density, which it's not going to do at temperatures of 300 kelvin because it's all still being mixed by thermal motion.
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Well, I should clarify that they'll also suffocate after turning all the O2 into CO2, but that's a different XKCD.
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Would piping air to the roof to be run through clear (polycarbonate?) ducting be effective at sanitizing the air?
If the air is moving quickly then it is probably not exposed long enough to UV. It would hurt your HVAC efficiency pumping that air up into a greenhouse-like duct then back down.
Those old goofy ionizers that leave huge dusty footprints around them are probably effective. Less particles in the air mean less places for a virus to stand. People quit using those ionizers not because they are ineffective, but because they kind of make a mess and get pretty gross looking.
Nobody wants to eat in a paint booth, probably, but a downdraft air system would ostensibly do the trick of not spreading germs from one person to the next. Perhaps such systems could be installed in future waiting rooms and lobbies.
Newer hospitals are designed around mainta
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Combined with a spray guard, air handling probably could cut rates of transmission significantly. It wouldn't be perfect because you can't fully control air's chaotic motion, but it is worth looking into.
We do a piss poor job on proper indoor air handling in general. I don't think there will be many places that can spin up something in time for this pandemic, but it is something we should be paying much better attention to in general. Our indoor environments are full of all sorts of nasty stuff coming of
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It's not the indoor air handling is done piss-poor: It's done to the extent needed to ensure comfort. Anything above that would just be seen as a waste of money. Air handling has never been seen as part of infection control before, outside of hospitals. Perhaps that will change in future, but it's not something you can easily retrofit to existing buildings.
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Most indoor air handling probably targets cost and energy efficiency, not air quality. Move the least amount of air possible at the lowest energy cost possible while trying to meet minimal temperature comfort thresholds.
And nobody cares about a 1001 Office Karens with space heaters, since that power consumption isn't baked into the building's "energy efficiency" rating.
Re:Air cleaning (Score:5, Interesting)
Modify HVAC for maximum updraft so that air had little chance of migrating horizontally across a room or stagnating. It's probably easier to add more air return capacity in ceilings. This would probably also mean fresh air supplies would need to be dropped down in columns from the ceiling to close to the floor.
Some kind of UV filtration stage in the HVAC system makes sense, I don't see why this couldn't be retrofitted into any HVAC system inline with the return and/or supplies regardless of other modifications.
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If the outside temperature is within tolerable range, there's an even easier way: Just suck all the air out and blow it out the roof, drawing fresh air in. Just forced ventilation, turned up far higher than needed for comfort alone.
If you wanted to do that with a heated or cooled building, you'd need a giant heat counterflow heat exchanger on the roof too, which makes it prohibatively expensive.
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For much of the world, that period of time of nice weather is preciously SMALL.
For example, I live in New Orleans....and well, we are past the mark of comfortable outdoor air.....even today, high in the 90F's...and I think humidity may be in the 85% range.
And this will get worse and worse, peaking in late August/Sept time frame.
We actually had a dece
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Small wonder we have such a virtuous cycle of global warming going.
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The UV light used in UV sanitizers is a lot more powerful than the natural UV of sunlight. I'm not sure if your ducting scheme would be effective.
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It can be used to clear the air of macro-organisms too, they just might complain more.
DUUHHH (Score:2)
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The experts keep changing their minds. Doesn't spread from animals, does for cats, wait no it doesn't transfer back to humans, doesn't live on surfaces for long, lives on surfaces for 24 hours, lives on surfaces for 3 days, doesn't transfer from surfaces, you don't need face masks, face masks are not effective, the least effective face masks are effective but the most effective ones should be saved for healthcare workers because they are not effective if laypeople use them.
I think people (perhaps unreasonab
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Outdoor commerce (Score:2)
Maybe outdoor markets and cafes are the way to go, at least during fair weather.
Re:Outdoor commerce (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly I'd welcome that. I far prefer sitting out on a deck at a restaurant or cafe if available. Unfortunately you don't see them all over the place because they often cover sidewalks etc.
For obvious reasons we've been seeing a lot less traffic (cars) lately. I know some trends are likely to remain or remain on some level after this, and the reduction in cars is not likely; but it would be a nice side effect of being able to re-purpose some of the sidewalk and road real estate for something like this.
Re:Outdoor commerce (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe outdoor markets and cafes are the way to go
I've got an idea: With the current shortage of processed meat, maybe we could stock the outdoor markets with live captured wild animals.
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Alas, I live in a place where 30C and 80% humidity is a mild day. Most of the time, it's hotter and more humid.
In other words, your proposed solution might work where you live, not so much elsewhere....
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You could move to Hell. I hear it's slightly dryer.
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fume cabinet (Score:2)
I've seen reports that airflow can increase the spread of the virus, can it be used to diminish the spread of the virus. eg, if there were a pressure gradient forcing air from ceiling to floor and through filters before recycling might that reduce the radius of transmission significantly ?
Also I'm surprised we're not seeing more protective headgear, eg. a ball cap with a visor and air filtration, a small fan in the peak would seem to be enough to keep the face bathed in filtered air
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The key problem is not the Coronavirus. (Score:2, Insightful)
We had diseases like this before. We will have them again.
The key thing that changed this time, is that the anxiety epidemic crossed a treshold, from letting tenthousands of people die because that's just the normal thing with such diseases, to the extreme opposite, where we want *complete* control and *zero* infections or it's not good enough, as *nobody* must die!
As somebody who formerly had a crippling hygiene/cleaning obsessive-compulsive disorder, let me tell ya: That will never happen!
Society is just
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Excess deaths in the UK are somewhere around 65k. We don't know how high it would have been had we not gone into lockdown.
Problem for any government is that they can't say to people that 100k deaths or 500k deaths or 1 million deaths is acceptable. Estimates were around 1 to 1.5 million dead if we did nothing, so around 2% of the population, maybe a little more. We would have had to dig many mass graves and the economic shock would probably have been as bad or worse anyway. People wouldn't just carry on, th
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You mean those estimates that have been continually downgraded? More than anything, this has been an exercise in panic inducement.
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Even if they were wrong (no saying they are) that was the information available at the time. Ignoring it would have been gambling at best, probably criminally negligent under UK law.
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Yes, but that's not the same as the government saying we are going to let a million people die, because the economy. Please don't do anything to protect yourself and your family if it has any negative economic impact, okay?
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The key thing that changed this time, is that the anxiety epidemic crossed a treshold, from letting tenthousands of people die because that's just the normal thing with such diseases,
A lot more than "tens of thousands" of people have already died. Get your numbers straight.
I know it is expecting a bit much, but can we think sanely for once, please?
Get your numbers right or the world will seem insane, but it will be you that is insane.
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I totally agree that many have misunderstood the measures and are going far beyond reason into anxiety mode.
But I think it's a small fraction of the population. For the majority, the goal is only to make the contamination factor go below 1 so that time makes this disease disappear (or at least under control until we have a vaccine or a way to quickly reduce the death rate). So we should not "accept" deaths nor ruin our lives to avoid any death. We should design and follow good practice to ensure the factor
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I mean, we could let a bunch of people die... or people could be forced to wear masks (which isn't a big issue), and we can test people extensively. With a few 2-3 week lockdowns spread throughout.
It's not "YOLO" vs. "do nothing for a year". It's building a reasonable middle ground. Like punishing people who throw/threw coronaparties and don't use a mask. And contact tracing. And frequent testing.
Also, I'll not that Ebola, AIDS and Sarin all have much lower R0 values than Coronavirus.
Hey, it's just the Spanish Flu! Get over it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of what you wrote there is specious.
In the USA, we've already lost ~100k people even though a very small percentage of the population has been infected so far. Even if you estimate 4 - 5% of the population has already been infected, if Covid-19 is allowed to run rampant then it could easily get to 50% and you can similarly scale up the death toll by at least a factor of ten.
1M needless deaths in the USA is something that we should be willing to go to great lengths to try to prevent!
Meanwhile, other countries have shown that complete containment and minimization of infection is a much better path than simply allowing it to roll over you in an uncontrolled manner. S. Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan have all shown that if you tightly control your borders, aggressively test, back trace, and quarantine within your population, then you can have *VASTLY* lower infection rates and resulting deaths than in countries (like the USA) where it is allowed to get out of control.
As a bonus, you don't need to shut down broad sections of your economy either to try to mitigate mass spread!
You present an extremely deadly false choice when there is an obviously better way to proceed that is being empirically proven in other countries right now.
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We don't even have to do anything that's costly to the economy, but until we actually get those things implemented, everything needs to stay shut down, because people dying or getting sick and spreading it around is ALSO costly to the economy.
It isn't 'health or economy' it's 'sick and dead people aren't very economically productive either'.
1. Wear a mask
2. Move all businesses that serve the public outside as much as they can be.
3. Centralized quarantine where the government pays for you to be isolated away
More options... (Score:5, Insightful)
will have no semblance of normalcy until we learn how to be safe
...or until we have a vaccine. ...or until we have a highly successful method of treating infected patients. ...or until we determine why the vast majority of those infected either have no symptoms or mild symptoms while others die from it, so that those most susceptible can take additional precautions.
researchers are discovering the secrets of how COVID-19 spreads
The CDC just updated guidelines a couple days ago indicating that the risk of surface-based spread is very low. The vast majority of infections are NOT coming from an infected person touching a doorknob, and then someone else touches that doorknob and is also infected. We also know that this isn't being spread so profusely because people kiss, or have sex, or through blood transfusions, etc. It's a respiratory disease, being spread by typical respiratory methods (anything that can expel virus particles into the air - coughing, sneezing, talking, singing and probably even just breathing), just like the flu or common cold. The main difference is that we have an (at least marginally effective) flu vaccine, plus natural immunity from exposure to it over generations, so the flu and cold don't just randomly kill people that seem to be otherwise healthy.
Short of total isolation, the wearing of masks is probably the greatest single thing that can be done to reduce the transmission between people. One thing that would help is the manufacture of masks with close to N95 quality filtering, but in a more fashionable and comfortable form factor. It is utterly impossible for the general public to obtain any masks actually rated to handle virus sized particles at this time. That is a major part of the problem.
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Is that really necessary? My understanding is that the virus is primarily transmitted within liquid droplets which ideally would be captured on the inside of the mask of the person exhaling them. If the liquid evaporates (and recall the inside of a mask should be humid) and viruses become free to pass through the mask then the slightest of air currents should rapidly disperse them.
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until we determine why the vast majority of those infected either have no symptoms or mild symptoms while others die from it, so that those most susceptible can take additional precautions.
It's not obvious that that would work. If everybody tries to reduce the spread and only 0.1% of the population is asymptomatically spreading, modest isolation measures are enough to protect the vulnerable.
If the diseases rages through the less susceptible 80% of the population and 3% of the people are asymptomatic carriers, then the requirements on the degree of isolation of the other 20% become 30x more strict. That's the difference between wearing a surgical mask and entering rooms through airlocks while
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One thing that would help is the manufacture of masks with close to N95 quality filtering, but in a more fashionable and comfortable form factor.
It's hard because N95 masks have to be tight to be effective, otherwise diffuse particles can get around the edges of the mask. Fortunately normal masks can make a huge difference [youtube.com], since coronavirus is not normally diffuse in the air.
Re:More options... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wearing masks and doing things outside. We should really take advantage of the fact that it's spring/summer in the northern hemisphere and move everything we can outside. Outside supermarkets, outside cafes and restaurants. Reclaim some parking lot space and put as much stuff as we can out there. Don't even bother letting people inside to shop, do most shopping online and pick up outside. There's no reason to force people to work inside with other people right now.
The worst places to be will be things like public transit, where you can't help but be inside something, but buses should have all their windows open to pass air through more quickly.
As stupid as I thought it was to see all those people on the beach 2 months ago, in retrospect, if you're just out on the beach and not gathering in groups and being an asshole, that's *exactly* where we want everyone to be. The sun and huge volume of air dilutes and degrades the virus.
The last thing is centralized quarantine. Something like 80% of spread happens inside families. If one person gets sick, for goodness sake, move them to a central quarantine that the government pays for. Pay a hotel for their rooms and fill it with people that aren't sick enough for the hospital, pay for their food and internet and porn, and have nurses come around every day to check on them.
Honestly, the things we need to do are simple and effective, we just need to actually get on it.
It's worked pretty well in BC (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know, the whole Social/Physical distancing thing has worked pretty well in British Columbia. Out of a population of just over 5 million, we've kept new serious cases (ie those that warrant testing) to about 10 to 20 for the last month. Hospitalizations are sitting at 43 and dropping, with only 9 in ICU. This without a full lockdown, just strong encouragement of social/physical distancing. A significant number of people are wearing masks, but it's not somethign that the government has ordered, nor have we had the whole shelter in place orders like the US. People have been encouraged to use parks, go out for walks, and just to ensure they maintain the distance.
The key has been good, solid, public health information with a solid, science based leader. Our premier (kind of like a governor), has stayed out of the limelight, letting the actual experts run the show, and Dr. Bonnie Henry (Chief Medical Officer) has been an absolute godsend to this province.
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Social distancing has worked even better in MB. We're down to 18 active cases, with only one person in the hospital (not ICU).
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Nerd and proud of it! (Score:2)
I've been socially distancing since 1982.
In other words... welcome to my world.
An interesting thought (Score:2)
Deep breaths and eyes (Score:4, Interesting)
The latest preprint implies that coronavirus infections tend to occur when taking deep breaths: singing, yelling, etc. That jibes with the indoor contact/family member spread. Laughing, coughing, yelling will expel more virus from the lower part of the lungs, sending your neighbors a plume of droplets that gets into their eyes and lungs.
If they're breathing deeply, like if they're singing, they'll suck the droplets into their lungs.
Masks will help because it's hard to expel a plume of virus into the air if you have a mask on.
Masks also help because it's hard to inhale deeply with a mask on.
As for the eyes, well, wear glasses.
Guided by science and expertise (Score:3)
Fat chance of that in the U.S.. We are guided by intuition, mediocrity, and conspiracy theories. Looks like it's working pretty well for us, so far. /s
Irony? The Atlantic laid off 68 staffers (Score:2)
The layoffs run across all departments including events, sales and editorial. The editorial department had 22 layoffs, half due to the company closing its video department. Bradley also said executives would take pay cuts and there would be a general pay freeze for the remainder of the year.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/0... [cnn.com]
I guess Trump will win 2020... (Score:2)
...because Liberals seem to believe that the only way to cope with a tiny problem is to curl up under their beds and cry that there aren't enough guardrails on life.
Certainly conservatives will suffer more deaths from their relatively cavalier attitude toward the virus, but at least they'll leave their house to actually vote.
(Which explains why Democrats are working so hard to enable voting from home, preferably from the fetal position.)
Please go to the gym StupidKendall (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, please put your idiotic and uninformed ideas into practice immediately. I think think you are the perfect person to show us all how it's done and spend all day at the gym breathing in that clean clean air. I mean gyms even smell good, because they are so well ventilated.
You definitely don't get a whiff of ass and sweat the moment you walk into a well maintained gym!
Show us how it's done StupidKendall ! We believe in your uninformed nonsense and undying support for Trump's most idiotic and deadly claims
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Yes, Hydroxychloroquine is safe in small doses, but when used for COVID-19 cases, it is used in high doses, which the Brazil study showed is likely to cause more deaths from heart failure.
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It is well known that hydroxychloroquine has deadly side effects. That does not mean that it is very dangerous. But if you give it to a lot of people, some will die. So it is important to understand the risk vs benefit trade-off.
This was just published in the Lancet:
https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
"In summary, this multinational, observational, real-world study of patients with COVID-19 requiring hospitalisation found that the use of a regimen containing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine (with or without a
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Gyms for example are about as safe as you can get.
Maybe not [nzherald.co.nz].
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I mean, have you ever been to a gym. People are supposed to wipe down the machines but people are rude and gross. Then, you get into the shared shower room, etc.
>
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Which is why we can reopen Universities [smbc-comics.com].
Re:MORE PANICKING, wrapped in intellectual clothin (Score:4)
The human race has experienced this situation many times before, and guess what? We're still here. We will survive this one, too,
Strawman. No one said that the human race wouldn't survive coronavirus.
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Otherwise it's a strawman.
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Well, he said it. That technically fits your criteria.
So he needs to take his own advice?
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</sarcasm>
H8rs gonna h8.
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This is just the flu, not the black plague.
It's neither the flu, nor the black plague. It's more deadly and contagious than the flue, but less deadly than the plague.
Interestingly, if the Black Plague happened today, we wouldn't need to shut down the economy, because we have the tools necessary to stop it. It's a bacteria.
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Re: Inject Disinfectant! MAGA! (Score:3)
Ignore him.
Well, about that... [xkcd.com]