WHO To Review Evidence of Airborne Transmission of Coronavirus (nytimes.com) 252
After hundreds of experts urged the World Health Organization to review mounting scientific research, the agency acknowledged on Tuesday that airborne transmission of the coronavirus may be a threat in indoor spaces. The New York Times reports: W.H.O. expert committees are going over evidence on transmission of the virus and plan to release updated recommendations in a few days, agency scientists said in a news briefing. The possibility of airborne transmission, especially in "crowded, closed, poorly ventilated settings, cannot be ruled out," said Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi, who leads the W.H.O.'s committee on infection prevention and control. She said the agency recommends "appropriate and optimal ventilation" of indoor environments, as well as physical distancing.
Agency staff fielded several questions from reporters about transmission of the virus by air, prompted by an open letter from 239 experts calling on the agency to review its guidance. Many of the letter's signatories have collaborated with the W.H.O. and served on its committees. [...] W.H.O. scientists said that for the past few months, the infection prevention committee has been weighing the evidence on all the ways in which the coronavirus spreads, including by tiny droplets or aerosols. "We acknowledge that there is emerging evidence in this field, as in all other fields," Dr. Allegranzi said. "And therefore, we believe that we have to be open to this evidence and understand its implications regarding the modes of transmission and also regarding the precautions that need to be taken." It will also be important to understand the importance of transmission by aerosols compared with larger droplets, and the dose of the virus needed for infection from aerosols, she said. "These are fields that are really growing and for which there is evidence emerging, but it is not definitive," she said. "However, the evidence needs to be gathered and interpreted, and we continue to support this."
Agency staff fielded several questions from reporters about transmission of the virus by air, prompted by an open letter from 239 experts calling on the agency to review its guidance. Many of the letter's signatories have collaborated with the W.H.O. and served on its committees. [...] W.H.O. scientists said that for the past few months, the infection prevention committee has been weighing the evidence on all the ways in which the coronavirus spreads, including by tiny droplets or aerosols. "We acknowledge that there is emerging evidence in this field, as in all other fields," Dr. Allegranzi said. "And therefore, we believe that we have to be open to this evidence and understand its implications regarding the modes of transmission and also regarding the precautions that need to be taken." It will also be important to understand the importance of transmission by aerosols compared with larger droplets, and the dose of the virus needed for infection from aerosols, she said. "These are fields that are really growing and for which there is evidence emerging, but it is not definitive," she said. "However, the evidence needs to be gathered and interpreted, and we continue to support this."
They're the WHO... (Score:5, Funny)
Is it aitborne?
> *We don't fucking know!* smash
It's not the Transmission that concerns me... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the last 20-30 years, the world has experienced a number of outbreaks of infectious diseases that have caused significant concern at a global scale. Examples include:-
H5N1 Bird Flu
H1N1 Swine Flu
Ebola
SARS-Cov03
MERS-Cov12
Covid-19
plus "lesser" infections, including:-
BSE, "Mad Cow Disease"
Numerous "Foot and Mouth" outbreaks
the list goes on...
Although the means by which each of these infections is transmitted is crucial to our ability to contain and ultimately defeat them, our ability to develop a long term strategy may well depend on the earliest stages of these infections making their way in to humans. Specialists talk about the ability of a virus to "jump the species barrier" - i.e. the H5N1 Bird Flu developing the ability to infect humans. But a more interesting question may be to ask not about the biological ability of the virus to cross species, but the circumstances in which that inter-species transmission took place.
I've read smatterings of on-line discussions [and have no way to determine their veracity] which suggest that, for example, H5N1 may have made the jump from domesticated fowl [chickens] to humans because of a particularly cold winter that prompted farmers in remote areas of Asia, who kept chickens, to bring their birds into the same space that was occupied by their families, to prevent the birds from literally dying of cold. Similarly, there is the suggestion that the epi-center of the Covid-19 outbreak was a fresh food market that dealt in what we in the west would consider unusual or exotic foods.
If there is any substance to these anecdotes [and that's a big 'if'] then perhaps one of the most substantive things we can do to reduce the risk of future outbreaks is to ensure that there are much more stringent health practices anywhere humans come in to contact with other species - and in particular all forms of livestock farming, plus, even more importantly, the entire length of the human food chain.
Having to face future potential infectious disease outbreaks when not prepared is worrying enough, but we should be looking beyond that to figure out what practices we need to change to stop or reduce the risk of future outbreaks.
If we want to continue with relatively non-impacted lives [i.e. the freedom to travel where we want, when we want] without taking excessive risks or being subject to quarantine restrictions, then we have to go to the source and tackle the issue there.
Nobody seems to be even raising this yet [perhaps because we're still in the middle of the present crisis] but maybe these are questions we should be asking.
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We know what we have to do to reduce the risk of future outbreaks.
Only Trump has the will to actually do it. The left is too addicted to chinese fentanyl.
Hand Washing (Score:2)
This is the crazy thing. A lot of diseases can be prevented or stopped entirely if everyone just washed their hands before and after eating. Ditto after interacting with any potential vector for infection, including animals. Really, that's it. Wash your hands.
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Having to face future potential infectious disease outbreaks when not prepared is worrying enough, but we should be looking beyond that to figure out what practices we need to change to stop or reduce the risk of future outbreaks.
But that involves doing things that inconvenience me!!!
I'm more important than everyone else! You can't make me do it, it's a free country!
Re: It's not the Transmission that concerns me... (Score:5, Insightful)
President Obama worked with the Chinese Government to have a team of (I think) 47 experts in infectious diseases, working in China alongside their national experts. That advanced team was cut by the current administration, leaving the US (and, through the US, the West, largely blind).
I said in my previous post that I didn't want anything I write to be considered critical of a nation, government, party, etc. Please don't take the above observations as being "pro Obama" or "anti Trump". That is NOT my intent. What I am much more interested in understanding would be the answers to questions such as these:-
1. What was the fact base on which the decision was made to embed a team of infectious disease experts in the first place? What was the perceived/likely threat thought to be?
2. Did anything change in terms of circumstances or evidence to alter that fact base in the run-up to the decision to reduce/cancel that in-country team?
3. What was the fact base on which the decision was made to reduce/remove the team from China?
4. Based on the experiences to date with respect to the Covid-19 outbreak, are there any plans to re-instate the forward team in China? Has this been evaluated? What were the recommendations given to the decision-maker and what was the result or outcome of that decision?
Go to any large, mature organization that runs a lot of technology and you'll see that their Production Support unit has an Incident Management or Problem Management function whose sole job is to ensure that after a major technology event, steps are taken to ensure that it doesn't repeat. Large organizations do this because they realize that their profits or business can be put at risk if they don't learn from past mistakes.
What I want and expect from my government - because i pay taxes for this purposes - is that the relevant institutions of power will learn from mistakes and ensure that future events can be either significantly mitigated, or, preferably, prevented in the first place.
This is why we pay taxes. This is their job. No excuses.
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President Obama worked with the Chinese Government to have a team of (I think) 47 experts in infectious diseases, working in China alongside their national experts. That advanced team was cut by the current administration, leaving the US (and, through the US, the West, largely blind).
Didn't happen [reuters.com]. What happened was that 3 disparate directorates were consolidated into one. And a few redundant individuals either resigned or were reassigned elsewhere. It wasn't eliminated - it was consolidated with two other directorates looking at health and disease issues in China.
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A friend works at CEPI (Score:5, Informative)
CEPI [cepi.net] works closely with WHO. A major problem is that WHO is staffed with scientists who aren't public relations people, that is, communication with the public isn't their specialty. So what a word or phrase means to them, in their scientific understanding, is not what it means to the general public. So when they say "airborne transmission" they mean something different than "droplet transmission". That is, to them, spreading through sneezing, coughing, or even talking, is not necessarily "airborne" transmission. It's "droplet" transmission.
The public, of course, thinks that if it spreads through the air (whether via droplets or small virions) it's "airborne".
Epidemiology is not the only highly technical field that has this problem.
Re:A friend works at CEPI (Score:5, Insightful)
CEPI [cepi.net] works closely with WHO. A major problem is that WHO is staffed with scientists who aren't public relations people, that is, communication with the public isn't their specialty. So what a word or phrase means to them, in their scientific understanding, is not what it means to the general public.
The problem isn't with the scientists, the problem with the journalists who report on highly technical field without the basic understand of the jargon used in the field.
Imagine reading a report of an American Football game, by a journalist who did not know what a "quarterback" is, and assumed it mean the back of a quarter (the coin). THAT is the level of understanding most journalist reporting on science and medicine have nowadays.
The journalist writing up the news should be the one clarifying any jargon that might confuse the general public, supposedly that's one of the value provided by journalists. But no, knowledgeable journalist costs too much, so we have news written by "journalists" who knew nothing.
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Indeed. I've seen one of the authors of the open letter to the WHO explaining on Twitter what they really wanted to say and the dillemma of using technical terms vs public communication:
1) Airbone vs "opportunistic airbone" [twitter.com]:
I am one of the scientists who wrote the paper. A critical problem, described by @apoorva_nyc, is lack of nuance on "airborne."
More accurate is "opportunistic airborne", transmits well indoors under crowded, low ventilation, long duration, no masks. Avoid each of those!
2) Aerosol vs true [twitter.com]
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It's not that epidemiologists are stubbornly attached to hair-splitting technical distinctions -- although that happens. Epidemiologists are uniquely concerned with *practical courses of action*. Should we *treat* COVID-19 as airborne? The answer can still be "no" even if airborne transmission occasionally happens.
I've read the letter to Clinical Infectious Diseases and it is mainly concerned with the *theoretical* possibility of aerosol transmission -- something that nobody disputes. The real disagreemen
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It seems pretty much so. The idea of WHO is not to provide medical assistance or advice to first world countries. The idea is first world countries tell who what to do in third world countries to limit the spread of dangerous contagions.
NO first world country should take any advice what so ever from who, unless it relates to providing services in third world countries. The specialist in WHO come from first world countries and those countries can get their advice, from their specialist, loyal to their count
Re: A friend works at CEPI (Score:3)
No, it's the journalists that report on the internal scientific debate that are not being clear or understanding the nuances. But it would help if the WHO has a debt press office to help clarify things.
WHO's doing Science (Score:3)
This is how science works, everything is under constant review, things changes, new data, new insights.
That is what the idiots cannot grasp.
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And also scientists can just be wrong. The correct way to approach the problem of aerosol infectivity is to actually investigate the problem. Test it. Almost no one has done that. Apparently just making assumptions is considered a better strategy. Science that is not even if scientists are doing it.
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I think it is harder than you think to test for that hypothesis. The question is basically whether COVID is infectious via the air (we don't really care if it travels in the air but the virus dies along the way). How do you test for that in a rigorous way? You need to demonstrate that it is possible for people (or perhaps mice) to get infected via that mechanism rather than, say, being infected via droplets or other mechanisms.
There are strong suspicions (e.g. cases that are hard to explain otherwise) that
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If the scientists can't test for it (for whatever reason), then it stops being science and starts being their opinion. Yes, they're allowed to have an opinion, but being scientists doesn't suddenly make their opinion any more worthwhile than MY opinion (n
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First, I am not saying that they can't test. I am just saying that they probably can't test in a short period of time.
I disagree about your statement on opinions. If you have a lot of familiarity with a subject you can have an informed opinion that is more likely to be right than other opinions. So I would privilege their opinion over, say, someone who has no experience with dealing with viral infections, on whether or not it is likely to be spread by air. You still have to treat it as opinion, but you can
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Don't think your passive-aggressiveness would somehow classify as friendly. At best does it make you a scientist and an idiot.
Laughing Out Loud (Score:2)
Let's review the recent proclamations of your precious WHO, which totally isn't playing this down to help the Chinese Communist Party save face:
"There's no evidence of a novel infectious disease in Wuhan, no need to worry."
"There's no evidence of human to human transmission, no need to worry."
"There's no evidence of asymptomatic transmission, no need to worry."
"There's no evidence that wearing a face covering helps prevent infection, no need to bother with one."
"There's no evidence of aerosol transmission,
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It doesn't matter what idiots grasp. When scientists produce excuses and not result then we're all doomed.
CDC guidance had airborne transmission from the st (Score:2)
The CDC guidelines at least as far back as in early March had stated transmission was by small dropletsin the air. Plus there were modeling studies from MIT and others reported in the news showing transmissionout to 20 feet or so, e.g. across grocery store aisles. This debate must be about droplets staying in the air for a long time, as it's not news that droplets in the air are a vector. Also infectious disease experts familiar with other outbreaks on cruise ships stated the closed ventilation systems are
Useless pedantry (Score:3)
Most scientists know fog isn't steam, but it's droplets of water, and fog can certainly float in the air and remain there for a long time when the conditions are right. The same is true for molecules, which may not spread everywhere or remain in place either under certain conditions.
This distinction between what is and isn't airborne makes less and less sense the smaller particles get. If anything should this discussion have been about the size and research should have been done a long time ago to come to practical conclusions and not to create further debates.
Why are scientists arguing over something so fundamental as this and in this late into an outbreak? It is embarrassing and makes no sense at all.
They should assume it is airborne (Score:2)
"The possibility of airborne transmission, especially in "crowded, closed, poorly ventilated settings, cannot be ruled out,"
This is what they are doing wrong. They should assume it is airborne unless evidence shows otherwise.
i.e. assume yes instead of assume no
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it as herding cats. The WHO has representatives from a large number of countries, politically minded people who have climbed a long way. They want to get their names out there and sometimes that desire leads them to make statements they should not have made.
This should not even be in doubt, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/0... [cnn.com] was an early indication.
There was a larger outbreak after a Russian-Baptist church service in Frankfurt, Germany - 180 present leading to 200 infections (family) - but that was the first Sunday the church had been permitted to reopen and there was a lot of hugging going on as well. "God is stronger than Coronavirus" was their attitude.
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that WHO have made a number of mistakes, primarily that they have stated "not likely airborne" instead of at least saying "we don't know enough" and instead assume that it is airborne.
It's always a lot easier to relax constraints if it's not as bad as expected instead of letting a virus spread and then discover an "oops".
Of course - China delayed the information quite a bit as well making WHO misinformed, because spreading the virus to the rest of the world wouldn't be China's problem directly.
University of Nebraska said Airborne in March (Score:2, Informative)
Meanwhile last March, University of Nebraska published extensive research that the virus is 'likely airborne', or transmitted via airways...
"....data is suggestive that viral aerosol particles are produced by individuals that have the COVID-19 disease, even in the absence of cough. First, in the few instances where the
Re:WHO? (Score:4)
I think that WHO have made a number of mistakes, primarily that they have stated "not likely airborne" instead of at least saying "we don't know enough" and instead assume that it is airborne.
I think WHO definitely has a messaging problem in this regard. There's four broad categories into which facts about the virus can fall into.
1) Things that are well studied and true. (presymtomatic transmission)
2) Things that are well studied and false. (hydrochloroquine as an effective treatment)
3) Things that are suspected but not fully studied. (a symptomatic case giving you immunity, at least for a year or so)
4) Things that are just unknown. (long term complications)
I don't know if they have the language to properly communicate which slot information should drop into. For instance, the infamous "no evidence of human to human transmission" was probably a #3 but phrased as a #2.
It's always a lot easier to relax constraints if it's not as bad as expected instead of letting a virus spread and then discover an "oops".
Of course - China delayed the information quite a bit as well making WHO misinformed, because spreading the virus to the rest of the world wouldn't be China's problem directly.
China wasn't faultless, but they weren't the massive villains people made them out to be.
People act like China knew they had the start of an international pandemic from a novel virus back in December. But they had to figure out what they were dealing with just like everyone else. And once they realized is was a potential pandemic they didn't waste a lot of time in bringing in outside researchers and sending out the genome.
And to anyone thinking that China should have known better I would simply point out that by early February the risk of an international pandemic should have been clear, and China had already shown that lockdowns were an effective template for fighting the virus.
So given how obvious that should have been in hindsight then why aren't you rich [google.com]?
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
The choir infection spread would have mostly been via 'droplet', this is distinctly different from 'airborne'. The difference is droplets fall quickly, if you enter a room a few minutes after an infected person has left then you won't catch the disease by breathing in their exhaled droplets. Airborne OTOH is still being researched, AFAIK there is only circumstantial evidence. The question remains: can a person walk into a room where an infected person has been and catch the virus due to aerosolised / airborne particles. 200 scientists think the virus is airborne and have been pushing WHO to acknowledge this.
Can anyone point to a conclusive study?
Another thing I haven't seen data on is: where are infections occurring - Home? Workplace? Transport? Shops? They should know this in places with good test & trace.
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Droplets float in the air. Japan has been saying this since the very start.
https://youtu.be/H2azcn7MqOU?t... [youtu.be]
Official advice is to ventilate rooms using open windows and fans. Try to have two openings to allow airflow.
https://youtu.be/59tQeL0ehbM [youtu.be]
Ventilation not only removes droplets from enclosed spaces, it causes them to adhere to walls and floors where they are unlikely to get into your body. Combined with regular hand washing and cleaning surfaces like door handles and desks this will greatly reduce the risk of infection.
Re:WHO? (Score:4, Interesting)
The question remains how infectious the smaller particles are. It's a shame they didn't do the test of a home-made mask and a surgical mask in the same laser-highlighted manner.
I've been hearing the term 'viral load' a few times, it's possible that people could get a less severe version of the disease if it starts off via a small load since the virus has to multiply for longer giving the body a better chance at building it's defence.
What is scary is 'lung scarring' which is permanent and might be happening to 30% of people even when they are asymptomatic, it's a more research needed thing - previous Sars caused lung scaring, this Sars might actually be worse when it infects both lungs instead of just the one that was more often the case with earlier SARS afaik.
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When workforces open, this seems like it would be easy to test, as most companies have a limited number of restrooms for employees to use. Those restrooms are often not well-ventilated, and I would expect concentrations of airborne coronavirus to be higher in restrooms than other areas within a building.
Since many larger companies are now using RFID badges to limit access to entrances and secured rooms within their buildings, it wouldn't require too much work or effort for a company to install RFID readers
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Except there's a time element, people spend all day in offices sat near each other but they only spend a few minutes in the restroom.
'Health experts' have said you're at risk if you've spent 30 minutes or more with someone, TBH that doesn't completely add up, anecdotal evidence suggests you can contract the virus if some nasty piece of work decides to spit on you - that only takes a few seconds. Depends on 'viral load'.
I think what all of this means is if you're just in the same room as someone and they're
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WHO? (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK there does need to be a critical thresh-hold, even though this seems counter-intuitive to me. One thing I heard about a few times is 'viral load', it has been said that if you get infected via a small amount of viruses then you'll be more likely to get a mild case of the disease and getting a large amount of viruses in one go can cause a bad case.
Also a factor is how far a virus gets, upper-respiratory vs lower respiratory. If the virus gets straight into the lungs to cause infection then pneumonia is more likely to result. Otherwise if the virus starts in the back of the throat etc then the body gets time to learn how to deal with the disease and if the virus hits mucas then it can be game over / no infection. Makes me wonder, could having a cold actually offer protection?
I guess wearing a mask means mostly only smaller particles get out and a smaller amount of them.
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I don't really know the details of why a higher viral load would be more deadly than a lower one, so the following is just my guess on how it might work...
The virus will have an exponential growth (I know, not exactly that, but it can be approximated like that for this example). The immune system has intruder-detection systems. When it detects the virus, it gets into action and fires up an immune response, but this takes a bit of time to really get into action.
Let's take the example of 1 virus or 2^32 virus
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Agreed, the early curve is probably a major factor. Load size will dramatically affect how many "doublings" can happen in the first five minutes (hour, whatever) by sheer virtue of math.
Another is that a greater viral load means even if you're going to have mostly worn, dessicated virii, but also at least a few intact, potent ones. The ones that can actually begin doing hot math.
I will express this idea numerically: If you get a random sampling of 12 humans (random age, size, race) there's almost zero chanc
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Re:WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-n95 masks are 75% effective as in when used they stop 75% of infections relative to not wearing a mask.
n95 masks are so called because they stop 95% of particles in a given size range, they are not perfect.
It's all probabilities, stand 2m away from someone instead of 1m away and be 90% less likely to catch the disease.
Work from home = be a high percentage less likely to catch the disease.
Cycle or use own vehicle to get to work and you can't catch the disease on public transport.
Improve ventilation when with co-workers to decrease the likely-hood of catching the disease.
Don't socialise with somebody with COVID-19 to almost 100% reduce your chance of catching COVID-19 from them.
Anti-infection measures reduce the R0. R0 of 2 = rapidly increasing spread, R0 of 0.5 = rapidly declining spread. Test, trace and quarantine also is very effective at decreasing spread rate.
Re: WHO? (Score:3)
Some non-N95 masks are better than N95. I go to the grocery store and church in a 3M respirator loaded with P100 filters on the inhale ports (and a 3D printed home made filter on the exhale port). Much better than N95. And there are masks with antiviral/antibacterial cloth which might be better than N95.
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Informative)
Your comment assumes that masks aren't useful because they aren't 100% perfect. We know COVID-19 spreads via droplets which are stopped fairly effectively by masks. Hence, we can reduce infection rates by wearing masks. We don't know if it is also airborne, which may reduce the effectiveness of masks but not drop it to 0.
Re:WHO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because there also might be airborne spread that requires much better filtering we should abandon something that's proven to work, even if it's not 100% reliable?
Sorry, I don't see a nice way to put this but your reasoning is stupid.
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Actually, from what I've seen, the common assumption in modeling infection spread is that each virus that hits you has a small chance of infecting you, and these chances just combine like independent events.
Re:WHO? (Score:4, Informative)
yes but when the amounts vary a lot on the log scale (number of zeros) then you can think in terms of thresholds. As in millions do nothing, billions are high risk.
Herding Wolves more like (Score:2)
Wolves that love to bite to show who is the alpha.
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Re: WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WHO? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because those states are were the outbreaks started. The outbreaks and the huge surge in cases just started recently in primarily red states. The death rate is still lowish from this, maybe it's a different strain and the death rate will remain low which would be good news. Maybe we're getting better at knowing how to treat it, and treat it sooner. But if you look at number of cases instead of deaths, then you'd see that it's not a blue vs red disease.
Right now, looking at https://covidgraph.com/usa [covidgraph.com]. Top four in total cases are New York, California, Florida, Texas. That's 2 blue and 2 red states. For new deaths, Arizona and California are in the lead, nearly neck to neck, 1 red and 1 blue. There's a lot of ways to slice this, but the virus isn't being partisan.
Note that most blue states are also the states with the larger urban and suburban areas, so that's exactly where you'd expect to find the most cases per capita of a communicable disease. Even in the red states the outbreaks are in the larger cities. And that's not because those cities are the liberal part of the state but because that's where the people live closer together and have more daily interactions with each other.
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You wish you were just damned.
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Trusting/not trusting the WHO is a false dilemma. The WHO stated clearly where its information came from: China.
The WHO is there to coordinate so that China doesn't have 150 other countries all asking for the same data.
Anyone who understood what the WHO was looked at the source of the data and made up their mind. Clearly Trump either did not understand what the WHO is or trusted China.
Re:Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to hear about theWHO. China can keep it as a toy for all I care. To the rest of the world, this organization has made itself useless.
It wasn't useless to all the countries that took its early warnings seriously, and had much better outcomes than America as a result.
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Their initial position was that there was no reason to assume the virus would spread outside of China. Lots of people want to rewrite the history because it makes them feel safer and for political reasons, but they were very careful about not sounding the alarm too soon and were criticized for their caution. Don't you remember? It wasn't that long ago.
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Or perhaps you mean their apparent warning now that the airborne transmission we have been seeing for months might actually exist?
The WHO didn't issue early warnings, they issued reassurances that
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
New Zealand 22 4
Australia 106 4
Greece 193 19
Norway 251 46
Finland 329 59
Denmark 609 105
Germany 9,103 109
Canada 8,711 231
...
USA 133,977 405
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?%22%20%5Cl%20%22countries#countries
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Since when is the UK back in the EU?
And besides, people like you used to mention the Netherlands and Ireland as well. Not anymore, though. The USA will pass France in a couple of weeks as well. Might even surpass Italy in a few months. And high population, Sweden, seriously?
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Reading comprehension fail.
"I find it interesting that you left off all the EU countries"
The EU is a better construct now since the millstone round its neck has brexited, by the way.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder why we're not calling for the head of Sophie Wilmes, the PM of Belgium, who's led her country during the time of putting up about the 2nd highest number of deaths per million in the entire world?
Belgium who currently have a 7 day moving average of 4 deaths a day [worldometers.info]
Compared with America's 556 a day [worldometers.info]
Wonder no more.
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The smaller the country, the more a single death counts. But don't you worry, you'll get closer to the top eventually considering that the USA has twice or thrice the amount of daily deaths than the EU27 despite the EU being more populous.
Belgium has been hit bad at first, although not even close to New York, but they got their shit together by now. The USA not so much.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Sweden made a deliberate decision to ignore the WHO advice and rely on their citizens being sensible, so they are something of an outlier, albeit a potentially interesting data point for determining the relative effectiveness of enforced lockdowns vs. practicing social distancing measures. There's a lot more data to be gathered before that can realistically happen however, and the waters are going to be muddied by the numbers of people that changed behaviour patterns during lockdowns that then made their subsequent relaxation with more effective social distancing make it look like social distancing was all that was needed (see Sweden)..
Ultimately though, look at the daily infection graphs on Worldometers for each of the countries you listed and compare with the US. No matter how badly they screwed the pooch on Covid-19, the EU countries still show a clear peak, then a fairly steady decline into a long tail; e.g. they got the spread of the virus under control within a few weeks and have kept it there (so far at least). The US, on the otherhand, appears to have merely had a saddle on the way up the mountain and is still on its way to the actual peak, e.g. they have never really had the spread of the virus managed, let alone under control.
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WHO's initial advice was that there was no reason to panic and certainly no reason to wear masks which they regarded as entirely ineffective unless you have tested positive for COVID. It's hilarious how people are just rewriting history to suit their beliefs, but relatively unbiased people haven't forgotten. Almost no one was taking COVID seriously at first except China themselves and WHO was no exception.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
It's less about rewriting history and more about watching in real time a continually evolving knowledge of the characteristics of a novel coronavirus. If COVID19 had been more like other serious coroniviruses such as SARS or MERS in regards to transmission vectors, the recommendation against wearing a face mask unless you had tested positive would have made perfect sense,
Firrst of all, It was and remains well known that homemade masks never offered any protection at all from getting a virus such as this, and it was important to discourage what was certainly panicked public from hoarding medical masks that would be sorely needed by the medical community.
So... you might ask, why didn't they tell people to wear non-medical masks then to prevent transmission? Again, that didn't make a whole lot of sense at the time either.
If COVID19 were like other coronaviruses, the time during which a person would be contagious would generally be restricted to a period in which they were symptomatic, with only a very tiny asymptomatic spreadable period around that. Homemade masks even do virtually nothing to prevent symptomatic transmission that good coughing or sneezing etiquette would not also achieve. A mask will stop the largest droplets, certainly, but does not stop those smaller than the pores in the fabric. While certainly even this protection is better than none at all, by far the most effective way to prevent symptomatic transmission was (and remains today) to be keeping good hand hygiene and staying away from other people if you are sick.
However, as knowledge of COVID19 grew, something became clearer in the months that followed that nobody had really been expecting.... and that was that it was surprisingly likely that COVID19 could be infectious even when people had no symptoms at all. People could be carrying the illness for days or weeks while their own body was doing nothing to fight it, and transmitting it to other people asymptomatically, completely oblivious to the infection they were spreading. A person could be carrying the illness for 2 weeks before symptoms occur, and sometimes may never develop symptoms at all.
This is where the incentive to tell people to wear homemade masks comes from. While it might not provide significant protection against preventing symptomatic transmission where the velocity of the droplets is much higher and many tiny droplets can ordinarily escape the mouth moving fast enough to travel upwards of 3 meters away even with a mask on, this could be offset, partially at least, by emphatically telling people who had symptoms to stay at home. These droplets are obviously moving much more slowly with asymptomatic transmission, and are often even further slowed down by the mask as they lose some momentum bouncing or grazing off the edges of the fibers. Homemade masks, therefore, while not perfect, could provide far more protection from asymptomatic transmission that no barrier at all.
Of course, this fact has always been true... but until it was obvious just how likely it was that a person could spread the disease asymptomatically, it just didn't make any sense to arbitrarily tell people that they should be wearing homemade masks. Again, the knowledge that homemade masks offered no protection would have led people aware of this fact to completely ignore the request, or worse, to have become panicked enough by the recommendation to have wanted to hoard the sorely needed medical masks that the medical community required. Meanwhile, those who might have been less knowledgeable about the virus may have wrongly gotten the impression that the recommendation was based on some sort of study that s
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Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The US infection numbers are higher than they've ever been: 60000 new cases in one day. Compared to Germany, the US population is just four times as many people, but the US currently has 200 times as many new infections per day and 100 times as many dead per day.
The US was having a nationwide block party that is still going on in some places. Our leaders said it was ok for a thousand people to gather as long as they were at a block party. Medical professionals supported the block party too. But now they say, no, that couldn't be the cause. Must be the people going to the market wearing a mask.
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It doesn't make sense to consider European countries individual but the US as a whole. There is huge variation between states.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
New Jersey 1720 ...
New York 1660
Connecticut 1220
Massachusetts 1190
Florida 180
California 170
Texas 100
Hawaii 10
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Oh and I should add that California and Texas are both seeing in excess of 10,000 new cases a day at the moment so they are likely to get a lot worse.
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Because DR for small infection group variance (Score:2)
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You do realise that the USA has the 9th highest death rate in the world and the world has about 200 countries in total?
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You do realise that the USA has the 9th highest death rate in the world and the world has about 200 countries in total?
That is one way to look at it.
Another way to see it is that America has made more progress in building herd immunity than 192 other countries.
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I guess the others prefer to wait out for the vaccine.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except there's no evidence herd immunity works and there IS evidence that those who recover even from mild infections have a high risk of dying from blood clots destroying the brain and other organs.
It's possible that IS the immune response. To increase blood clotting 9000x above normal.
In that case, herd immunity is via the grave.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
America might be one of those countries where ideology makes it impossible to keep the death rate low.
The only way out may just be a vaccine or eventual herd immunity.
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No you are completely wrong. The more it spreads and the more people it infects. The greater the chance it will randomly mutate into something worse.
If you had of stamped it out. Then it's gone. Nothing more to worry about.
You may also have noticed that the hospitals are getting overwhelmed again. No sense in dying needlessly, unless you're a Trump supporter I guess.
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Generally viruses mutate into more benign forms, but you knew that, right? Evolutionary pressure is entirely against increased virulence.
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Your sig is quite appropriate for Mr AC.
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Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. The whole social distancing which the WHO sensibly calls "Physical Distancing" was supposed to be a temporary measure to flatten the curve so that the hospital system doesn't get overwhelmed.
Yes, and whether this is wave 2 or wave 1.5 (bonus round!) the current condition is that the hospital system is nearly overwhelmed in many locations right now.
Staying at home indefinitely just isn't going to work
That is not and never has been the plan. The plan is to wait until there is effective treatment, or ideally an effective vaccine, so that we can go back to going places. It may or may not go back to the old normal, but the plan is to develop a new normal.
Some people aren't happy with that plan, which is why we've had a massive surge of new cases.
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I don't want to hear about theWHO.
If you want to be less well informed, why visit a news site?
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Way to miss the central message of my post. Nicely done.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, far better to listen to a consistent message. No matter how wrong it is.
Some people are capable of learning. Even if you and Trump are not.
You Trump followers are all the same.
Jan 8th - First CDC warning
Jan 9th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 14th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 16h - House sends impeachment articles to Senate
Jan 18th - Trump golfs
Jan 19th - Trump golfs
Jan- 20th first case in South Korea
Jan 20th - first case of corona virus in the US, Washington State.
Jan 22nd - “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Jan 28th - Trump campaign rally
Jan 30th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 1st - Trump golfs
Feb 2nd - “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China." NYT Times reports 430,000 + people allowed into US since Trump announcement. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0 [nytimes.com]... [nytimes.com]
Feb 5th - Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend.
Feb 10th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 12th - Dow Jones closes at an all time high of 29,551.42
Feb 15h - Trump golfs
Feb 19th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 20th - Trump campaign rally
Feb 21st - Trump campaign rally
Feb 24th - “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb 25h - “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
Feb 25h - “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
Feb 26th - “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
Feb 26th - “We're going very substantially down, not up.” Also "This is a flu. This is like a flu"; "Now, you treat this like a flu"; "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Feb 28th - “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
Feb 28th - Trump campaign rally
March 2nd - “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2nd - “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5th - “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5th - “The United States has, as of now, only 129 cases and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6th - “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6th - “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6th - “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6th - “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 7th - Trump golfs
March
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Why do we stick politics into a medical discussion. How about this: The people who don't like President Trump blame everything on him. Argue with that.
Now back to the medical issues:
Unfortunately, there has been no clear message from the start. But this is our new world we live in. On one side we have "experts" who jump out there and say this kills everyone to further their agendas (making money) then there are the other who say this is no big deal keep living. (also so they can make money) In reality
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the response to the infection is a political issue. Healthcare is a political issue. Access, delivery, funding...that's all politics.
You can't de-politicize the response to this whole situation, that's the problem. Our political leaders are making political decisions and we have to live or die by the consequences. It would be nice if it was just a matter of the medicine, but it's not.
Asking people to wear masks was always a political issue, honestly. It feels like it's not in other countries that have a history of it, but in Hong Kong, the government tried to tell the people NOT to wear masks, but they did anyway, and made sure that people that needed them got them. It was a community effort. Make no mistake, the *people* in Hong Kong are responsible for their low infection and death rates, not the government. But it's politics all the way down, man. You can't get away from them when you're dealing with city/state/country-wide decisions.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
They haven't back pedalled on anything. You see, unlike you, I read their reports rather than listen to Fox News' interpretation.
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That's strange. Because they back peddled on China being forthwith just the other day...
Huh who knew the AP, AFP, and Reuters were Fox News...ohhhhhh wait, I see. It's a grand conspiracy now.
Re: Yeah who cares? (Score:2)
They didn't list there all the CDC info which was updated and available on the CDC website throughout this time, including the methods of transmission (droplets) and importance of wearing masks. The Trump administration muzzled the CDC from public news conferences, but their info was always available.
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Don't get fooled again. [youtube.com]
That's what we have to learn from this.
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Yeah, the only reason the WHO kept saying masks aren't important is because China told them so! Everybody knows China dismisses masks.
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An early warning system is only useful when you heed it. You made it useless yourself by telling yourself that you don't need it.
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China can keep it as a toy for all I care.
What makes the WHO a Chinese toy? The fact that the WHO is only allowed to report on official government data? In that regard they are an American toy as well. Simply get your CDC to state that you solved the virus and the WHO will heap praise on you as well.
That's what an apolitical organisation without an agenda does.
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I am sick of "advice" from the WHO, the media and my local politicians who's knee-jerk reactions are ridiculousness. I want numbers that are reliable and that I can trust
In the USA, it is the job of the CDC to produce those numbers. Unfortunately, it is not doing its job. We shouldn't have to wait for the WHO to produce them. The CDC should be doing it. Why isn't the CDC doing its job?
Also, where are people who have recovered from the virus? How about we start hearing stories from them of their experiences.
That information is just a web search away. If you really wanted it, you wouldn't be asking here. That, or you don't know how to internet, and really aren't part of Slashdot's target audience, so why are you here?
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