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Coronavirus is in the air – there’s too much focus on surfaces
- hanklazard 6y agoAnecdotally, as someone who works in a clinic where we test for COVID-19 much of the day (and have multiple positive patient tests per day), I can tell you that this editorial certainly seems correct. Even with our caution with PPE, I’m certain that we would have had a major outbreak among staff over the past year if this thing was transmitting efficiently via fomite—it’s just too difficult to use perfect form 100% of the time when dawning and doffing PPE or to not absentmindedly touch your face, etc.
- mordechai9000 6y agoIt seems like people have been saying this from the beginning. But no one can say for certain that there is little or no fomite risk, and hand washing and surface cleaning gives people something to do that helps them feel like they are in control.
- _jal 6y agoSo one way people lose my trust is to tell me to do useless things for my perceived psychological benefit. I have both changed doctors and jobs for this reason. Treat me like a child and you're out of my life.
- xiphias2 6y agoWhat if your broker is ,,protecting you’’?
- irrational 6y agoI’ve got to be honest, that does sound rather childish on your part.
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- staunch 6y agoIf you're locked down at home, so not sharing air with strangers, then fomites are basically the only risk of exposure. There's no good reason not reduce it to near zero with basic sanitation procedures.
- hanklazard 6y agoThere is still minor (1) risk of transmission via fomite, so I agree it’s still a good idea to wash hands and keep surfaces relatively clean. I just think we should rebalance our behaviors/resources based on the accumulating evidence. 1. https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099(20)30561-2.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/laninf/PIIS1473-3099...
- sigstoat 6y agotreating surface cleaning as a big deal and the air as minor caused many business to make bad trade offs. last summer target was making you wait in line longer (dangerous) while they carefully wiped down self checkout stations between users (minimally helpful). i don’t know what they’re doing now, because i didn’t care to subject myself to that any further.
- Johnny555 6y agoBut telling people to do something that's not known to reduce risk distracts people from doing the things that help the most. Instead of a store spending thousands of dollars on cleaning supplies and labor to disinfect floors and shelves 3 times a day, they could spend that money improving ventilation.
- dingaling 6y ago"Improving ventilation" isn't something you just order from the hardware website. You can't just fit a fan to a window to extract air and call it job done job done without studying how that changes internal airflows. Does it address dead zones? Does it actually make matters worse by creating hot zones which coincide with areas where people concentrate? Does the exhaled air create risks to workers outside? It requires a lot of study, planning and execution and lots more money than some cleaning supplies.
- sigstoat 6y ago> lots more money than some cleaning supplies lots more money than 12+ months of cleaning supplies, labor, delayed purchases, and increased transmission risk amongst your staff and customers? i suspect it is close enough that we can't hand wave it away as you want to do. in some facilities it may have been nearly free, with some reprogramming done to the existing HVAC system, to run the fans more, or more frequently pull in outside air. > Does the exhaled air create risks to workers outside? this is just FUD.
- divbzero 6y agoSetting up better ventilation also helps people feel in control and actually makes a bigger difference.
- legerdemain 6y agoDonning. As in "don we now our gay apparel," and so forth.
- lambda_obrien 6y agoI'm just amazed he got doffing correct but donning incorrect, most people don't know the word doffing in my experience.
- selimthegrim 6y agoDoff one's cap probably fell out of common use when people stopped wearing hats.
- arduanika 6y agoAnd when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat, No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.
- fsckboy 6y agoi just googled "don and doff" to see if I could find any shared etymology with "on and off" or if that was a coincidence... and discovered that "donning and doffing PPE" is a thing, hence, not so surprising that somebody would learn it or know it.
- schoen 6y agoHuh, Wiktionary suggests that these came from "do on" and "do off" or similar phrases in Middle English. I never realized that!
- lambda_obrien 6y agoI'm not surprised someone used them together, but in my experience most people don't deal with PPE a daily basis, so a lot of folks seem to use don (a common word I guess) but I've rarely seen doff used.
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- AareyBaba 6y agofomite: objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as clothes, utensils, and furniture.
- travbrack 6y agoPut the kids under a tent (not fully enclosed) with some propane heaters in the parking lot of the school.
- sjg007 6y agoI mean it's a good idea, it's a fire hazard but still.
- flukus 6y agoTents have extremely simple evacuation procedures.
- faitswulff 6y agoI like the idea, but it’s about to be -11 degrees Fahrenheit here in the Midwest...
- Capira 6y agoA group of renown epidemiologists from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard demand: "Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal." http://gbdeclaration.org/ http://gbdeclaration.org/
- mikeyouse 6y agoLol “renowned epidemiologists” who insisted the total US mortality would remain under 100k deaths. These clowns can be safely ignored.
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- timr 6y agoNone of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration said anything of the sort. This kind of çomment is unhelpful and uncharitable. It's an ad hominem attack.
- mikeyouse 6y agoIf you want to play the childish “list off logical fallacies” game, the original post was an appeal to authority. Feel free to read up on all the “amazing” work done by the signatories and their colleagues at Hoover and other beclowned institutions but whats the point of litigating something that’s been so conclusively proven already.
- timr 6y agoI didn't "list off logical fallacies". You dismissed the authors, wholesale, because you asserted that they made a claim about something unrelated. That's an ad hominem attack.
- gamblor956 6y agoNo, but two of the 3 lead signatories claim that Sweden is a model for COVID response, despite Sweden having more COVID-related deaths and serious cases of COVID than all of its neighbors combined...
- nlh 6y agoI predict we’re going to look back at ourselves in a few years and find a few things particularly egregious, much as we look back at “smoking is good for your health!” ads from the 1950s: 1. Our early guidance that masks don’t help (because we needed to save the real masks for healthcare workers); and 2. Our collective obsession around Mar-Apr 2020 with surface disinfecting. The shortage on Clorox wipes, the obsessive cleaning of hands and packages and groceries. The wiping down of airplane seats. Hand sanitizer everywhere. In the end we’re going to realize it was all about close proximity airborne transmission.
- staunch 6y ago1. Was just a flat out lie by various public health officials that they justified for the greater good. It was probably the biggest and easiest-to-prevent mistake of the pandemic, and it certainly cost many lives. 2. It still makes sense to wash hands, use gloves, and wipe down anything coming into your house that was recently touched by strangers. There's no good reason to allow a known vector, even if it's lower risk than airborne.
- mywittyname 6y agoIt should have been illegal for health officials to knowingly lie to the public.
- minikites 6y agoWhy only health officials?
- geoduck14 6y agoThe bar is higher for professionals speaking in their field of expertise
- NtochkaNzvanova 6y agoWell, now we know that they are neither professionals, nor experts. Most of what comes from the public health establishment is more like "science theater" that is engineered to obey whatever political dictates need to be handed down with the air of authority. Recall the proclamations from last summer that massive street protests were either magically not going to spread COVID, or that it was somehow acceptable because "racism is a public health issue".
- torgian 6y agoFill the air with bleach, that'll take care of it!
- jacobkg 6y agoSerious Question: I have been super paranoid about surfaces for the past year. Disinfecting groceries, quarantining packages, washing hands after touching the mail or opening takeout, etc. This is pretty draining. Should my takeaway be that all of these precautions are unnecessary?
- nibsfive 6y agoYes, rounds to totally pointless. Don't be indoors with people is >90% of the risk.
- garyrob 6y agoI'm the same way. My logic is: It may be very rare that it's a problem, but if it does happen that someone with the virus coughs on my groceries, mail, etc., then it's dangerous, even if it isn't a risk just due to them touching those things. I'd rather not take the risk.
- michaelwu 6y agoEven if the risk of transmission from surfaces turns out to be low, I suspect it’s still >0%. Given the potential of developing chronic conditions from covid and the number of times we come into contact groceries, deliveries, etc., it seems rational to keep wiping down surfaces.
- orangecat 6y agoLiterally everything you do has a >0% risk of death or serious injury. You have to pick your battles, and I would expect that being paranoid about delivery boxes fails the cost/benefit test for almost everyone.
- itronitron 6y agoWell, it's worked for you so far. I don't disinfect groceries or quarantine packages but I always wash my hands after coming back inside (from the store or checking mail.)
- gxqoz 6y agoOne thing I'm curious about is whether all this extra "deep cleaning" is going to have other negative health consequences. i.e. from increased indoor concentrations of the chemicals used to do the cleaning.
- loyukfai 6y agohttps://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-downside-of-clean-scientists-fear-pandemics-hyper-hygiene-could-have-long-term-health-impacts https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/the-downside-of-cl... // The downside of clean: Scientists fear pandemic's 'hyper hygiene' could have long-term health impacts A paper published in January raised the possibility that the pandemic could make some people more susceptible to chronic conditions and diseases, including asthma and obesity. //
- stjohnswarts 6y agoGood thing I'm still living like a slob and working from home then. The biome in my home is very healthy
- null_object 6y agoIn Sweden people continually blow their nose by holding one nostril and blasting the mucus from the other straight out into the air. Joggers of both sexes (but mostly men) do this all the time, even with other people all around them on the street. When I last got the subway an older guy did it on the platform, just before the train doors opened and the passengers walked out - presumably straight through the fine droplets hanging in the air. No-one here seems to think this habit is strange, and those times I’ve said anything to the people doing it they are genuinely mystified by my complaint. Maybe this article should be more widely disseminated...
- pragmatic 6y agoThis is a thing old farmers do. Usually not around too many other people though.
- null_object 6y agoIndeed the Swedish name for it indicates the farmer origins of the practice - but I’m talking about the streets of central Stockholm. Honestly, I genuinely don’t understand why no-one has even thought about this really common habit, and warned people not to do it.
- betwixthewires 6y agoWell it's like the Chinese letting babies shit in the street. Chinese have garments specifically designed for children to do this with ease. Every nation on earth has agrarian origins. And our habits and behaviors shape our culture and continue beyond their utility even when our surroundings and lifestyles change. There's a lot of inertia and habits like these don't change without concerted and deliberate effort.
- at_a_remove 6y agoIn the United States, this is called the "farmers' handkerchief."
- 6y ago
- elchief 6y agoeveryone on /r/china_flu and /r/wuhan_flu has known this since late 2019 IIRC the intial evidence was COVID transmission between apartments in Hong Kong via the ventilation system
- gruez 6y ago> everyone on /r/china_flu and /r/wuhan_flu has known this since late 2019 are you sure you're not misremembering? I just checkend and both subreddits were created in late janurary 2020.
- loyukfai 6y agoThe stack effect is problematic in HK whereas there are a lot of high-rise apartments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_effect Also, it's been spread via poorly maintained drainage systems.
- vimy 6y agoWhy can't we put HEPA purifiers in every room?
- chundicus 6y agoI would imagine money primarily. On top of that, the larger the room gets the more costly and ineffective this becomes.
- bluGill 6y agoWe should. But it takes hours to cycle all the air in a room through one. I haven't heard of any covid studies, but don't think it replaces a mask.
- gruez 6y ago>We should. But it takes hours to cycle all the air in a room through one hours? A random hepa filter I searched up costs $215, has an airflow rate of 246CFM , and is rated for coverage of 361 sq. ft. Assuming a room with that area and a ceiling height of 9ft, that works out to 3249 cubic feet. Dividing that by the airflow gets you 13.2 minutes, which is the time it takes to cycle the same amount of air as the room's volume.
- bluGill 6y agoYou did the wrong math: you didn't account for air that gets sucked through the filter more than once. So that random filter is generally assumed to be about an hour to filter all the air in that room once. And that is assuming there is reasonable air circulation over the whole room - often what happens is the filter sits in a corner and filters that corner well and doesn't filter the rest of the room at all. More filters in the room, and different sized filters both exist.
- dingaling 6y agoWho's going to change the filters?
- dataflow 6y agoThis has been on the CDC website for quite a while now: "Currently there is no evidence that people can get COVID-19 by eating or handling food." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/essential-goods-services.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...
- christophilus 6y agoWasn't the original source some folks in Wuhan eating bats? Has that been debunked? Edit: That wasn't meant to be snarky. It really does seem to be a contradictory bit of evidence.
- gruez 6y agoYou mean bat soup, aka bats that have been boiled in water for at least several minutes? Eating the prepared product is probably not an issue. Butchering and/or being near them before they were killed on the other hand...
- duxup 6y agoI saw videos of some countries driving trucks doing a sort of fogging and spraying of whole outdoor areas. Not unlike in the article here. It seemed like a strange practice to combat a virus to me but when I raised the question I was told various things that I found pretty unconvincing. I'm glad to see some actual work identifying risks is out there now. I suspect surfaces, like other practices are focused on, because we can easily deal with them. Anyone can disinfect a surface. The air, not as easy unfortunately.
- burnthrow 6y agoOver the past year, the graphic illustration of most peoples' blind idiocy and superstition has been a bit much to take it all at once. The best thing is that I no longer care what anybody thinks about pretty much anything. The worst thing is the inherent unchecked nature of such eccentricism. It's why I've turned off most of the WWW now. Even an "enlightened" place like HN is mostly a bag of predictable tropes. The WWW (not the internet in general) has proven to be a trap, it's almost real enough to seem authentic. To a careful reader, there's little difference in value between the typical "top comment" and the weird rant of an off-kilter Waffle House patron. And there's no point in analyzing an endless stream of ephemeral rants from randos. That's the WWW now! I can't wait to log back in next week and see this guy at -1.
- adventured 6y agoThat's because it makes people feel good to think that there is something they can do to clean away Covid by following a normal cleaning routine regarding surfaces, something people understand well. It reduces the sense of helplessness for the masses and that's also why it won't be going away as a routine when it comes to Covid. It's basically sanitation theater.
- betwixthewires 6y agoThe problem with this article is that it takes at face value the stated goals of the pandemic response: to slow the spread of coronavirus. And while that is a goal, it is not the top goal. If it could be, it probably would be. The main goal is to soothe the public. People aren't told to wipe surfaces because it reduces the spread, people are told to wipe surfaces because this is all people can do. People are told to wear surgical masks, which say on the side of the box that they do not protect against viruses, because it is something they can do. People don't like to feel powerless. People cannot disinfect the air. But they can wipe surfaces and cover their faces with a piece of cloth, and keep busy with something to feel like they're doing something to protect themselves and others. Public messaging exist to manage people, nothing more.
- pbourke 6y ago> People are told to wear surgical masks, which say on the side of the box that they do not protect against viruses, because it is something they can do. It likely has some protection, and it inhibits the onward spread of the virus. If enough people wear them, it has a protective effect on the entire population: “The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts.” https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
- betwixthewires 6y agoWearing a grocery bag instead of a condom will likely also reduce your risk of unwanted pregnancy, that doesn't translate into being effectively protective. Masks help lower droplets and aerosol in the air from your breath. So they slow the contagion. But they do not stop it, if the average person were likely to contract a contagion within 6 months with normal behavior and a mask reduces transmissibility by 50%, this just means the average person is now likely to contract it within a year. It slows the spread. It does not reduce your risk of contracting the virus over your lifetime. And if you have comorbidities and are at risk, you are just as likely to die when you get it 1 year from now or 6 months from now. Masks did give us more time to develop a vaccine. So in the end they helped society. But they do not protect you. The only ways to protect yourself are a vaccine, social isolation until the contagion is eradicated, or hermetically sealing yourself in a plastic bodysuit every time you are in close proximity to other people. A lot of people confuse these two concepts (managing a population vs managing individuals) and think that they apply to and correlate directly with one another. They do not. It is the same counterintuitive mistake as misunderstanding test accuracy and false positive rate. This is the only point I was trying to make. CDC guidelines are not designed to protect you in a pandemic, they're designed to manage a population.
- BenoitEssiambre 6y agoIt's been a year now, why can't I buy a N95 mask?
- nikolay 6y agoYou can - on eBay! But prepare to pay $5+/piece (over $10 and even $20 for 3M ones). Meanwhile, supposedly, price gouging was supposed to be persecuted. There are lots of KN95 fakes, by the way. There are tons of KF94 authentic ones on Amazon.
- snypher 6y ago>KF94 Can we please have a global standard on masks already?
- nikolay 6y agoYeah, I know.
- jkim1258 6y agoFrankly, I've had too many issues with fake products on Amazon to trust masks being sold there
- nikolay 6y agoThere are counterfeit N95s on Amazon, too. I think the Korean ones from [0] are the most legit. They sell them on Amazon, too, and they have nice packaging, which is hard to counterfeit as it's too much work and requires quality details. They also have non-certified ones, which seems pretty good, too. They fit well, and don't touch your lips, i.e. the mask doesn't get wet unlike the surgical ones. My favorite is Gerson 2130 N95 I managed to buy on eBay last February for $2/pcs. They are cupped, they don't touch your mouth, and leave space, and have larger filter area and are easier to breathe without vents. They don't leak air either. I use them for at least 16 hours a mask without deterioration - expect the rubber bands, which are the worst part. My other favorite is Moldex 4800 N95 [1], but I buy them at nearly $10/pcs, and they are rare. They last the longest, fit perfectly without much need for adjusting via metal bands, can be taken off and simply hang on your neck, and their lace is adjustable plus they look very cool. In other words, we do have great technology here in America - probably the best respirators on the planet. I'm not sure why 1 year later we still can't produce enough and I see all medical stuff outside of COVID-19 units wearing plain surgical mask! BTW, I did manage to buy FFP3 on eBay recently for less than N95s (most people don't search form them, I guess) - they are almost the equivalent of N99, i.e. they offer even greater protection than N95. So, try that, too. [0]: https://soomlab-korea.com/ https://soomlab-korea.com/ [1]: https://www.moldex.com/product/4800-n95-airwave-pleated-easy-breathing-nuisance-organic-vapor-ozone-respirator/ https://www.moldex.com/product/4800-n95-airwave-pleated-easy...
- GizmoSwan 6y agoI recall reading a thread by healthcare professionals, expert in viral diseases during the onset, not sure where exactly. They were basically saying that the virus can only linger on surfaces for max 3 days. Knowing that fact stopped some of my paranoia about packages. Articles that I read indicated that a simple cloth reduced transmission by infected person by about 50%. Humble fiber dense cotton cleaning cloth, by 70%. Multiple layers were even more effective. My research indicated that salt would disintegrate the virus. I made my own masks and spread very fine salt made in coffee grinder on them and my gloves to improve the effectiveness. So far so good.
- nikolay 6y agoThe issue is the virus attaching to dust particles and getting airborne from surfaces, and getting inhaled.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y agoi am taking an exam which i have to do today in a few hours. offline, 30 in large room, no ventilation and no masks for 60-70% of examinees. fuck me this is india btw, where magically cases have dropped even when there is no lockdown and people are not willing to get vaccinated because homegrown vaccine hasnt even completed clinical trials yet...
- wdr1 6y agoIt still puzzles me that the WHO gets a free pass for loudly asserting as fact that COVID-19 is NOT airborne. https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airborne-the-coronavirus-is-mainly-transmitted-through-drop/3019704278074935/ https://www.facebook.com/WHO/posts/fact-covid-19-is-not-airb...
- cameldrv 6y agoI haven't seen a single case study that conclusively demonstrates that fomite transmission occurs at all. There have been a few cases from New Zealand that have been attributed to fomites, but then when you go look at it, it's "they were infected by touching the same elevator button." It's certainly curious that fomite transmission happens in a very small enclosed space with relatively little air circulation. What I've never seen is a case such as "they were infected by picking up a package dropped off outside their door", or "they were infected by using the same playground equipment a few minutes later." All of the cases have some element of people sharing the same air.
- joshspankit 6y agoBy your logic it sounds like it would be basically impossible to convince someone of fomite transmission.
- cameldrv 6y agoI provided two specific examples, where if we had a case study like that, I would be convinced. What I want to see is two people handling the same object but not breathing the same air. Could be a delivered package, a delivered food container, or any object brought from an index case to an infected person by a third uninfected person. This is precisely what people were worried about with everyone washing their groceries back in March/April, and I don't believe there is a single case that's been shown to have resulted from something like this.
- joshspankit 6y agoI did not mean to say that you didn't provide examples, and I'm certainly not arguing for/against fomite transmission (way above my pay grade) but the question is where do you draw the line? > What I've never seen is a case such as "they were infected by picking up a package dropped off outside their door", or "they were infected by using the same playground equipment a few minutes later." All of the cases have some element of people sharing the same air. By the logic of "Yes, they say it's from the button, but it's logical to assume that it was actually the air", if there was a report of exactly one of the scenarios you described, would you say "Ok, it's definitely fomites", or would you automatically start thinking "They say they picked up the package after it was dropped off, but did they open the door just as the delivery person left and it was actually transmission by breathing the same air?"
- flukus 6y agoThis seems to be especially true with the UK variant, just today Australia had another transmission in hotel quarantine between people that shared the same floor and only opened the door to get food. > The woman's husband, in her 70s, joined her in quarantine on January 16 and she decided to stay in the hotel with him for his 14-day quarantine period. During that time, a family of five arrived in Melbourne from Nigeria on January 20, and were placed on the same floor. The family tested positive on January 24, then the woman in the room opposite tested positive on January 28. Her partner has returned negative tests during his stay in the hotel - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/victoria-investigating-possible-coronavirus-spread-in-quarantine/13117828 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-03/victoria-investigatin....
- joshspankit 6y agoAnd they specifically mentioned having audited and found no shared ventillation!
- AstralStorm 6y agoOpened door = air exchange... Not to mention the virus can skip through HVAC installation.