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I was just commenting to a co-worker my entire family hasn't been sick since the pandemic started. That is very unusual for a family with young children. No fl
by gorbachev 5y ago
I was just commenting to a co-worker my entire family hasn't been sick since the pandemic started. That is very unusual for a family with young children.
No flu, no stomach viruses, absolutely nothing for more than a year now. Thankfully no covid-19 either.
- bombcar 5y agoI suspect a significant reduction of flu vectors is simply closed schools.
- wombatpm 5y agoWhile I have two myself, I am the first to say it: Children are disease carrying vermin
- pchristensen 5y agoMy phrase is "The world is a filthy biological soup", so the less we're in the world, the less covered in soup we are.
- jcwayne 5y agoI prefer "walking petri dish".
- Igelau 5y agoI refer to mine as pint-sized biological weapons labs. I never thought catching a cold was such a big deal until I caught one that had been mutated first by preschoolers.
- Fomite 5y agoThere's a reason a lot of epidemiologists I know, myself included, are fond of the phrase "fecal patina"
- llampx 5y agoIn Germany meanwhile it has become a meme that "schools are not the driver off the pandemic" stated by all politicians who are obviously taking a page from the Iraqi information Ministers playbook.
- ch4s3 5y agoThat's been borne out by data from several countries, children don't seem to readily spread COVID-19. Adults are the primary spreaders, which is sort of the reverse of the flu.
- greiskul 5y agoIs that data from countries where schools are closed? If so, yeah, of course they won't be the main spreaders, they are quarantined. Opening up schools because the closing of the schools is working in control the spread is just the worst.
- ch4s3 5y agoNo, it's from when German schools were open, when Israel's schools were open and from Sweden. There's also contact tracing data from a bunch of countries.
- hrktb 5y agoExcept when they do: they were only at lower risk, not no risk, and the new variants also had more and heavier effects on children. Compounding this with parents having to bring their children to school, thus generating more contacts than just kids alone. All in all, there was some data at the root of the policy, but sending kids to school is still a shitty proposition from a safety perspective.
- ch4s3 5y ago> Except when they do There's no evidence to support the idea that children under 12 are a much risk of spreading COVID-19. According to the CDC which is notoriously conservative, "in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission". According to the NYT [1], NYC school reopening did not drive spread. Here's another [2] look a children 9 and under in Israel showing both low infection rates and low spread in Israeli schools. We also know that basically no children die of COVID-19. But we do know that for small children being isolated at home is terrible for their mental health and educational futures. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/nyc-schools-covid-transmission-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/world/nyc-schools-covid-t... [2]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2778940 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
- kingsuper20 5y agoBoom. Got it in one, although I expect that a few flu cases are being blamed on Covid. Maybe in a couple more generations of improvement of telepresence we can mostly eradicate infectious disease. Next up: We each get a nutrient bath and direct hook-up.
- frockington1 5y agoYou may be interested in Soylent as a food source. It's the closest thing I can find to hooking up to an IV for nutrients
- f6v 5y agoWhere I live parents don’t understand what a lockdown is. During extended school holidays the children are all playing together. What’s the point then?
- kevingadd 5y agoIf they're playing outside, that's probably safer than being locked inside poorly-ventilated cages all day alongside unvaccinated teachers
- papito 5y agoStomach viruses. Where in the world are you? No, seriously - where? Because here in the United States people don't wash their hands before eating. It's fucking gross. I always sanitize my hands with alcohol pads before eating out - ALWAYS. But the others grab subway poles, handles, those nasty menus, and THEN they grab that sandwich with the same hands. If anything should come out of this pandemic, it should be Americans following basic hygiene. And I mean - basic. Hand sanitizer should be at every table.
- logicslave 5y agoYou do realize this is probably all in your head? Like the food you eat is probably full of bacteria, the plate you eat on, the fork you use? Like you sit there with an attitude, but in the kitchen you cant see your food was cooked on an unclean grill If it makes you feel superior or better, go ahead.
- papito 5y agoI am not going to touch a door handle, touched by hundreds of people before me, and then touch my burger with the same hand. Neither am I going to try and lick the same handle to develop immunity and get those precious germs into my system.
- kingsuper20 5y agoYou should probably never research eyelash mites. One thing I always like about human parasites (and no, I don't mean your coworkers) is that you can give a rough date to the invention of clothing.
- sneak 5y agoMost of the cooked food is at least 100C for a while. Dishes and utensils in commercial establishments (at least in the US) are by law sanitized either with temperature or bleach solutions. (The silverware drawer is another matter.) It's pretty hard for bacteria to live on a 200C grill. "Unclean" and "harboring live bacteria" are different things. You'd be surprised how much care is paid to hygiene in commercial kitchens. It's quite different than cooking at home, as the stakes are a lot higher.
- datguacdoh 5y agoHousehold with two young children, both under 4, and can confirm we have noticed the same thing. No one has been sick since last year; it's been one of the few bright spots over this time.
- WA 5y agoKindergarten was open and closed here in Germany several times in the last 12 months. My kids both caught a cold several times within a week after reopening.
- aarondia 5y agoThis year was a great experiment in person hygiene. It was the healthiest I have ever been for a full year, no colds, stomach bugs, anything. I'm not sure which practices I'll continue, but its definitely shown me that I have wayyyy more control over my health than I previously thought. Curious what others think are the most effective continued practices. Seems like social distancing isn't super reasonable, but maybe continuing to wear a mask in crowded places?
- rubicon33 5y agoYou can do a LOT. I haven't been sick once in 6+ years because I do the following: 1) Almost never eat out. Home cooked meals that I've prepped / washed. This was single handedly the biggest factor that completely removed "getting sick" from my life. 2) Hand wash before touching face, or food. 3) Avoid sick people. If I hear someone coughing or sneezing, I move away from them. Call me a germ freak, I don't care, I've had 0 sick days in 6+ years since I started taking these simple precautions. You don't even need to social distance... just avoid people if they're sick. SOME of this is impossible (on an air plane for example). Turns out, I very rarely travel so have likely just gotten lucky avoiding the dip shits that fly while sick.
- allturtles 5y ago4) Don't have children.
- wrycoder 5y agoI’m retired. I basically changed only two things in my weekly routine: I stopped going to a weekly meeting of about fifteen old men, and I stopped going to the local hairdresser, which is a small group of young women, most of whom have young children, and, I suspect, tend to work even if they are slightly ill, because they get paid by the haircut. I usually get two or three colds and one or two flus a year. In the past fourteen months, not a sniffle.
- wrycoder 5y agoEdit: I also stopped eating out about twice a month.
- shanecleveland 5y agoCame here to say the same. Winters are typically a string of constant runny noses and a stomach bug or two usually makes its way through the entire family each year. Literally nothing. While it is nice, I would definitely trade it for my kids to have normal social lives again.
- throwastrike 5y agoI wonder whether this is actually a good thing over the long run? My thinking is that our constant exposure to viruses strengthen our immune system.
- 0x445442 5y agoDue to T-Cell immunity, a max of 20% of the population was ever going to catch the CV19 version of the flu anyway. Its obvious at this point the reaction was extremely disproportional to the risk.
- mattei 5y agoI'm interested to know more, do you have any sources on this?
- michaelmrose 5y agoThe fact that he called covid a flu varient have tipped you off to the level of expertise involved. Did you really get hooked by this bait?
- 0x445442 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x.pdf
- michaelmrose 5y agoThat doesn't say that covid is a variant of influenza and towards the end of the July it was believed that aprox 20% of New York City residents had already been infected with covid. https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2020/study-finds-17-million-new-yorkers-have-been-infected-with-sarscov2-and-virus-was-in-nyc-earlier-than-reported-pr https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2020/study-finds-1... It's a discussion of a study published in nature last November. Despite this cases rose very sharply between October and early January. Your theory doesn't comport with reality as observed.
- 0x445442 5y agoIt says no more the 20% of the population was going to catch it, which was the claim of the comment.
- irrational 5y agoSame. An entire year plus without a single illness. I haven’t seen anything like it in my 48 years. I’m going to continue to wear a mask when out in public. Now I just need the people I associate with in private to do the same.
- sneak 5y agoAn added bonus is that a mask and big sunglasses foils facial recognition. I'm keeping the mask everywhere in public for as long as armed guards don't physically stop me.
- luxuryballs 5y agoMakes me wonder if this throws our immune systems into peril as we aren’t keeping up with the latest “updates”.