19 ms·

A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal, now dozens have Covid-19

98 points by ilamont 7y ago

JoeCianflone 7y ago
My wife has sung in choir for years there’s zero social distancing in them. You normally stand shoulder to shoulder while practicing and there’s normally a person less than a foot behind you so, to me, spreading like this makes perfect sense.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
AdamSC1 7y ago
This seems like poor reporting. Even droplet based spread (which is not airborne) can transfer over distances on to surfaces. This is why there is advisory for a 6+ ft physical distance. That does not mean it is an airborne disease, as it seems the virus needs to survive in droplets. It is no surprise to me that a choir singing could easily spread droplets on to surfaces and inadvertently touch their faces during that time. Even a heavy breath that expels air and droplets from the lung can cause spread. That doesn't mean its airborne.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  In the article they explicitly talk about this, the technical term is that it is spread by aerosols (basically, smaller droplets) in addition to droplets. This is similar to TB, which generally requires patients to stay in negative pressure rooms and their caregivers to wear N95 instead of surgical masks. As with all things with infectious diseases (like asymptomatic spread) it's less useful to ask whether it's possible to spread in a certain way, and better to ask whether that way is a large driver of new infections. For hospital workers, maybe; for the general public, probably not.
- adrr 7y ago
  Anyone who has sat in the front row of a concert or broadway show has see how much spit is spewed during singing.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  This isn't the LA Times saying it spread through the air: >The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms. Aerosols don't need to hit a surface to end up in someone else's lungs.
jennyyang 7y ago
They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". I read an article from a epidemilogist that wrote about a very recent study of an isolation chamber for a covid-19 patient. They detected the virus everywhere on surfaces in the isolation chamber. This is consistent with airborne droplet spreading, since the patient was presumably coughing and droplets were being spread throughout the isolation chamber. What they DIE NOT find was the virus in the air. If it's truly airborne like measles, it would be detected in the air itself, but that was not true. Thus, it is not airborne. I don't have the source for this, because I probably read 200 articles a day like everyone else so it's lost in my history. But I actively committed this to memory and reassured me that this was not airborne, but rather airborne droplet.
- Reason077 7y ago
  The thing is, though, Covid-19 doesn't cause coughing in asymptomatic cases. I had no cough before developing fever and muscle pains, and only a very mild cough afterwards. Are you suggesting that asymptomatic cases are not infectious? Likewise, according to the article, "nobody there was coughing or sneezing".
  - kharms 7y ago
    You ever breathe out on a cold winter day? Your breath is humid.
    - Reason077 7y ago
      Exactly! But I wouldn't describe this humidity as "droplets", like you would produce from coughing or sneezing.
      - untog 7y ago
        I might not describe it that way either, but do medical professionals describe it that way?
      - James_Henry 7y ago
danielrpa 7y ago
Fear mongering/rumors, no place on HN.
- anoonmoose 7y ago
  "Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead."
- James_Henry 7y ago
  This article seems to have a lot of hard facts and health experts' opinions. Perhaps this comment was made in mistake?
  - danielrpa 7y ago
    Yes - unfortunately, I can't delete it :(
Geee 7y ago
Can we assume that the virii can be suspended in the water vapor that is exhaled? If so, what effect does air temperature and relative humidity have? It was studied before that the infections spread fastest in areas where temperature is 8.72 degrees Celsius [0]. [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coronavirus-highly-sensitive-high-temperatures-dont-bank-summer https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coro...
- whateveracct 7y ago
  Nit, but it isn't virii (doesn't make sense given etymology) It's viruses :)
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    It makes sense, but it's "wrong" if you're a prescriptivist ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_... is pretty thorough on the topic I'd say.
    - whateveracct 7y ago
      > However, in computer enthusiast circles in the late 20th century and early 21st, the non-standard viri form (sometimes even virii) was well attested, generally in the context of computer viruses. I think it's pretty funny that the incorrect usage is in computer circles. I have seen many engineer coworkers use the wrong -ii suffix (e.g. virii, statii) in order to sound "fancy" :eyeroll:
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        I'm not sure it's to sound fancy, just done by naive analogy. And perhaps because viruseseseses sounds bad to English language natives. Here's a not unrelated question: 1 computer mouse, several computer ...?
      - benibela 7y ago
        Computer engineers should start using a regexp like syntax: 1 virus 2 virus+ 3 virus+ ... Then the engineer+ can also distinguish between multiple virus+ and no virus*.
seraphsf 7y ago
The public guidance on “airborne” vs “droplet” transmission is deeply harmful. Public health officials have too-narrowly defined the word “airborne”. In choosing jargon over plain language, they’ve misled the public.
- joshstrange 7y ago
  Just like with the masks and once again it's going to get people killed because when/if they do finally reverse their position/messaging people will not hear the correction or just harbor so much distrust they shut down all together. We are /still/ dealing with "It's just the Flu" people even with the president no longer saying that.
beders 7y ago
This makes me sad and furious at the same time. Anyone who has sung on staged, or acted, for that matter, knows that there will be spit. And it will fly far. Farther than this group separated. Furious because: You kinda should have known, choir leader.
- paulmd 7y ago
  Churches remain a huge transmission vector that nobody wants to shut down because it's a cultural touchstone for large parts of the community. Church choirs are probably just the most dangerous aspect of that. It's much easier to point the finger at millennials on spring break (pro tip: millennials haven't gone on spring break for 10 years now), but this is one of those things where boomers are refusing to stop behavior that is enabling super-spreading.
mariodiana 7y ago
> One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. I am a doctor by no stretch of the imagination, but I was a voice major in college and sang in choirs for 4 years. When you sing, you breathe in deeply, from the diaphragm, and hold the air low in your lungs. Properly, your abdomen will expand more than your chest. Moreover, you hold the air in. Singing is not like breathing out at the doctor's office. You take a deep breath and then let that air out in a controlled manner over the course of a musical phrase. That kind of breathing is exactly—and instinctively—what you would not want to do if you were in some kind of miasma of pathogens. Imagine walking through a sick ward at a hospital, or even a cave full of bats. You would be trying not to breath, taking only shallow breaths. Again, I very well may not know what I'm talking about, with respect to disease transmission, but I think the forceful and deliberate inhalations are more significant than the exhalations.
bkdbkd 7y ago
In this interview Professor Kim Woo-joo describes a similar incident in Korea, where a choir contracted the virus. He adds that 5um is the min for 'droplet' infection, and that if the droplets remain airborne they can desiccate, and shrink , and then move from 'droplet' to 'aerosol'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/n86y3 https://archive.md/n86y3

98 points by ilamont 7y ago

My wife has sung in choir for years there’s zero social distancing in them. You normally stand shoulder to shoulder while practicing and there’s normally a person less than a foot behind you so, to me, spreading like this makes perfect sense.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

AdamSC1 7y ago

This seems like poor reporting. Even droplet based spread (which is not airborne) can transfer over distances on to surfaces. This is why there is advisory for a 6+ ft physical distance. That does not mean it is an airborne disease, as it seems the virus needs to survive in droplets. It is no surprise to me that a choir singing could easily spread droplets on to surfaces and inadvertently touch their faces during that time. Even a heavy breath that expels air and droplets from the lung can cause spread. That doesn't mean its airborne.

ahelwer 7y ago
In the article they explicitly talk about this, the technical term is that it is spread by aerosols (basically, smaller droplets) in addition to droplets. This is similar to TB, which generally requires patients to stay in negative pressure rooms and their caregivers to wear N95 instead of surgical masks. As with all things with infectious diseases (like asymptomatic spread) it's less useful to ask whether it's possible to spread in a certain way, and better to ask whether that way is a large driver of new infections. For hospital workers, maybe; for the general public, probably not.
adrr 7y ago
Anyone who has sat in the front row of a concert or broadway show has see how much spit is spewed during singing.
James_Henry 7y ago
This isn't the LA Times saying it spread through the air: >The outbreak has stunned county health officials, who have concluded that the virus was almost certainly transmitted through the air from one or more people without symptoms. Aerosols don't need to hit a surface to end up in someone else's lungs.

jennyyang 7y ago

They have discussed this ad nauseum. It's not airborne. It's designated as "airborne droplet". I read an article from a epidemilogist that wrote about a very recent study of an isolation chamber for a covid-19 patient. They detected the virus everywhere on surfaces in the isolation chamber. This is consistent with airborne droplet spreading, since the patient was presumably coughing and droplets were being spread throughout the isolation chamber. What they DIE NOT find was the virus in the air. If it's truly airborne like measles, it would be detected in the air itself, but that was not true. Thus, it is not airborne. I don't have the source for this, because I probably read 200 articles a day like everyone else so it's lost in my history. But I actively committed this to memory and reassured me that this was not airborne, but rather airborne droplet.

Reason077 7y ago
The thing is, though, Covid-19 doesn't cause coughing in asymptomatic cases. I had no cough before developing fever and muscle pains, and only a very mild cough afterwards. Are you suggesting that asymptomatic cases are not infectious? Likewise, according to the article, "nobody there was coughing or sneezing".
- kharms 7y ago
  You ever breathe out on a cold winter day? Your breath is humid.
  - Reason077 7y ago
    Exactly! But I wouldn't describe this humidity as "droplets", like you would produce from coughing or sneezing.
    - untog 7y ago
      I might not describe it that way either, but do medical professionals describe it that way?
    - James_Henry 7y ago

danielrpa 7y ago

Fear mongering/rumors, no place on HN.

anoonmoose 7y ago
"Nearly three weeks later, 45 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or ill with the symptoms, at least three have been hospitalized, and two are dead."
James_Henry 7y ago
This article seems to have a lot of hard facts and health experts' opinions. Perhaps this comment was made in mistake?
- danielrpa 7y ago
  Yes - unfortunately, I can't delete it :(

Geee 7y ago

Can we assume that the virii can be suspended in the water vapor that is exhaled? If so, what effect does air temperature and relative humidity have? It was studied before that the infections spread fastest in areas where temperature is 8.72 degrees Celsius [0]. [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coronavirus-highly-sensitive-high-temperatures-dont-bank-summer https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3074131/coro...

whateveracct 7y ago
Nit, but it isn't virii (doesn't make sense given etymology) It's viruses :)
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  It makes sense, but it's "wrong" if you're a prescriptivist ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_... is pretty thorough on the topic I'd say.
  - whateveracct 7y ago
    > However, in computer enthusiast circles in the late 20th century and early 21st, the non-standard viri form (sometimes even virii) was well attested, generally in the context of computer viruses. I think it's pretty funny that the incorrect usage is in computer circles. I have seen many engineer coworkers use the wrong -ii suffix (e.g. virii, statii) in order to sound "fancy" :eyeroll:
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      I'm not sure it's to sound fancy, just done by naive analogy. And perhaps because viruseseseses sounds bad to English language natives. Here's a not unrelated question: 1 computer mouse, several computer ...?
    - benibela 7y ago
      Computer engineers should start using a regexp like syntax: 1 virus 2 virus+ 3 virus+ ... Then the engineer+ can also distinguish between multiple virus+ and no virus*.

seraphsf 7y ago

The public guidance on “airborne” vs “droplet” transmission is deeply harmful. Public health officials have too-narrowly defined the word “airborne”. In choosing jargon over plain language, they’ve misled the public.

joshstrange 7y ago
Just like with the masks and once again it's going to get people killed because when/if they do finally reverse their position/messaging people will not hear the correction or just harbor so much distrust they shut down all together. We are /still/ dealing with "It's just the Flu" people even with the president no longer saying that.

beders 7y ago

This makes me sad and furious at the same time. Anyone who has sung on staged, or acted, for that matter, knows that there will be spit. And it will fly far. Farther than this group separated. Furious because: You kinda should have known, choir leader.

paulmd 7y ago
Churches remain a huge transmission vector that nobody wants to shut down because it's a cultural touchstone for large parts of the community. Church choirs are probably just the most dangerous aspect of that. It's much easier to point the finger at millennials on spring break (pro tip: millennials haven't gone on spring break for 10 years now), but this is one of those things where boomers are refusing to stop behavior that is enabling super-spreading.

mariodiana 7y ago

> One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. I am a doctor by no stretch of the imagination, but I was a voice major in college and sang in choirs for 4 years. When you sing, you breathe in deeply, from the diaphragm, and hold the air low in your lungs. Properly, your abdomen will expand more than your chest. Moreover, you hold the air in. Singing is not like breathing out at the doctor's office. You take a deep breath and then let that air out in a controlled manner over the course of a musical phrase. That kind of breathing is exactly—and instinctively—what you would not want to do if you were in some kind of miasma of pathogens. Imagine walking through a sick ward at a hospital, or even a cave full of bats. You would be trying not to breath, taking only shallow breaths. Again, I very well may not know what I'm talking about, with respect to disease transmission, but I think the forceful and deliberate inhalations are more significant than the exhalations.

bkdbkd 7y ago

In this interview Professor Kim Woo-joo describes a similar incident in Korea, where a choir contracted the virus. He adds that 5um is the min for 'droplet' infection, and that if the droplets remain airborne they can desiccate, and shrink , and then move from 'droplet' to 'aerosol'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU&t=923s

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/n86y3 https://archive.md/n86y3