outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

In Australia, when a known case has been on a plane they contact everyone within six rows of the case to get tested. They also publish the flight numbers, dates and time.

There has to be a TTI system in place, though. I wouldn’t go near a plane anywhere right now but certainly not one in the US.

probably more likely to catch several other diseases in laguardia

more like lagiardia amirite

i'm sorry but who the hell do you think you are making jokes in this thread? please stop and consider that there are many people on this board who have directly and personally suffered pain, fear, job loss, deep anxiety, and many other highly unpleasant consequences from the ongoing pandemic, which continues to deliver these consequences at an accelerating rate with no end in sight, and many of these people do not consider this the appropriate thread for such light heartedly frivolous hijinks as you chose to inject into this discussion.

you've gotta do that a third time before it's funny

oh believe me I'm waiting for it

the burrito that bored a generation

sometimes i only notice a poster bc every time i see a landfill post that adds zero value to the board i notice the same dn next to it welcome PBKR to the stage

― Mordy, Thursday, July 2, 2020 9:57 AM (yesterday)

in case it was unclear, that means you're an uninteresting individual who sucks at posting

nb: burrito, you didn't make a joke. you outsourced it.

i don't like esby but I'd proclaim him emperor of ILX over burrito-dude

and thus we get another derail. how does this happen? (<-- rhetorical question alert)

I do like esby and I'd proclaim Heart's eponymous 1985 album Heart to be better than both Kill 'em All and Bonded by Blood, two pathetic albums of garbage by frustrated white men who felt the need to forcefully make their boring opinions known

remind you of anyone?

anyways, NEANDERTHAL, here's some real music for you to think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5GGMhmo-M

this was just my way of concurring burrito sucks

now now there’s no need to put heart, metallica, and exodus in competition with each other. they all made great music we can enjoy

could we enjoy them somewhere else, plz

moving on...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/health/coronavirus-mutation-spread-study/index.html

"We were able to test whether the G form of the virus was more infectious than the D form," Montefiore, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development, told CNN. "All the results agreed that the G form was three to nine times more infectious than the D form"...

don't you want someone to care about you?

Not buying the plane filtration being that good. Just because they can't trace it to a plane didn't mean it didn't happen. There's a reason people get colds a lot after traveling.

I've banned the burrito. I'll unban him in 72 hours, but I don't have high hopes for him after that.

Oh I'm sure he'll be able to gather a little fan club handwringing over nasty intolerant ILXors the way esby has.

Lol @ burrito. I hadn't seen Mordy's post, so thanks for that.

btw, burrito irl looks and acts like William Atherton's characters from Die Hard/Ghostbusters.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

Mexican authorities are closing the U.S-Sonora border to nonessential travel this holiday weekend, when Arizonans would normally flock to Mexican beach towns like Rocky Point and San Carlos for the Fourth of July.

Starting Saturday, July 4, southbound travelers without essential business in Sonora will be turned away at border checkpoints in Nogales, Agua Prieta, Sonoyta and San Luis Rio Colorado, said Sonora Gov. Claudia Pavlovich’s office. The governor did not specify an end-date for the border closure.

Huh, Mexico is paying for a wall after all.

it's definitely possible to get sick on airplanes, they still theorize you're at risk if the people in immediate rows near you, masked or not, have COVID and if they're coughing like fiends, but the HEPA filter does help for those you're further away from. HEPA filtering isn't instant so nasty droplets can squeak through if someone is hacking up a lung the row over.

but yeah, it's still definitely safer than indoor bars without question.

"Anybody need any Ventilators???"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/239-experts-with-1-big-claim-the-coronavirus-is-airborne.html

This kind of shit doesn't make the WHO look very good and raises some serious questions about what the role of such an organisation should be in the middle of a dangerous pandemic. They seem unable or unwilling to change course and give direction regarding how to best stop the spread of COVID despite mounting evidence that they haven't gotten it right so far.

The WHO has been inconsistent and incoherent, but afaict there is literally no real information in that article, let alone "growing evidence on airborne transmission of the coronavirus." Barely any attributed names, definitely little in the way of numbers, not even a link to the "open letter" these anonymous scientists have apparently written to WHO (which is reportedly being published next week). Theories may very well come to be proven true, but I'm pretty sick of articles that prematurely introduce alarming claims (ibuprofen makes Covid worse! people can be reinfected! you can get it from flushing toilets and people passing you on bicycles!) with nothing concrete to back up the claims. Perhaps that's why the article spends more than half its word count criticizing WHO, which is the real story but which is imo separate from the specific headline charge. Doctors and scientists are fallible and often driven by ego, and do make mistakes in judgement and communication, but the same thing goes for journalists reporting on scientists.

For weeks, information has been trending more and more towards airborne transmission and problems with enclosed spaces, but yes, looking forward to this question being settled definitively once we are all dead. Meanwhile, it's totally cool to send kids back to school in a little over a month while we stand back and watch case counts spiral out of control in states that have reopened too quickly. But definitely, let's not be concerned about sticking more people in enclosed spaces. We don't know for sure how dangerous it is, so let's assume the best and see what happens.

Just checked the WHO website, and comprehensive mask wearing is still not recommended, but hand washing is the #1 item they recommend for everyone. I'm sorry, but this seems hopelessly behind the curve and indefensible. How much evidence is needed before you are willing to say, everyone wear masks, crack open windows, make sure you have some strategically placed fans and high quality air filters in place?

I think the WHO is an inexplicable mess, and I have no idea how or if places are going to handle school. Prolonged time in enclosed spaces has always seemed to be the problem, afaict, but I always thought that's because the particulates shot out by coughing and sneezing and whatnot were more likely to reach your face when you're stuck in the same space with someone. There's a difference between that and significant viral loads hanging and lingering in the air and infecting people that way, which is what I thought they meant by "airborne transmission." If there is proof or evidence of that they should, well, air it.

Speaking of airborne transmission, if they ever come up with a vaccine they should just pack it into fireworks and everyone around here would be inoculated overnight.

There's been (by my recall) around a dozen articles on virus being detectable (sometimes at high titers) much further than 2 m from an infected patient. Mostly researchers taking air samples and swabbing surfaces/vents in hospital rooms. But by March we also had documented transmission > 2 m outside of health care settings, like the Skagit Co. choir practice and the Chinese restaurant contact tracing study where diners were exposed via airflow from the index case, to the end of the room, then back through the HVAC system to the other side of the room. Remarkably, there's no established threshold in droplet size between those that will drop by gravity within 2 m, and those small enough to be lofted about until they evaporate. And it looks like SARS-CoV-2 remains viable in the "residue" left after most of a droplet evaporates, at least on some surfaces.

As this persists (for years?), there'll be a boom in retrofitting HVAC systems with HEPA filters and UV-C lamps..

"Easy" measures, like cloth/surgical masks and physical distancing (2 m) are enough to reduce most transmission outside of health care settings. But this aerosol stuff is why I schedule my bi weekly grocery trip just after "senior hour" in the early morning.

The author of the NYC piece:

Together, they paint a picture of the @WHO as an org with an overly medicalized idea of scientific evidence, too risk-averse to move quickly during a pandemic, and dominated by a few conservative proponents of hand-washing 5/x

— Apoorva Mandavilli (@apoorva_nyc) July 5, 2020

xxp

This is the problem though, it is very difficult to prove conclusively, but public health measures have largely been based on the more optimistic scenarios (also not proven), and seem to be breaking down. Areas that have based mitigation plans off the more pessimistic scenarios have fared better. I think it is completely unacceptable at this point not to mandate mask wearing, at the barest minimum.

Oh, I totally agree! That's not what that article was about, though. (Speaking of health care settings, my ER doc neighbor told me the covid virus is small enough to slip through a N95 mask, so even those things are not as good as people think they are, alas.)

xpost There's detectable (like RNA remnants) and there's transmissible, and those things keep getting conflated, especially in simulation studies.

Has there been any indication of people catching it in grocery stores, one of the few enclosed space destinations that have remained relatively active throughout this entire pandemic? I thought not (miraculously), and if not it would be good to learn why not. As for the choir practice and that infamous Chinese restaurant, I thought (incorrectly?) that was still largely due to people spending prolonged periods of time in very close proximity to one another. When I think of airborne transmission, my go-to standard remains something like measles, where it can hang in the air and infect people for hours after the infectious people have left. Obviously spittle and the like is going through the air, too, and that's how people are often getting it, but I guess I never thought of that as airborne transmission the same way measles can be transmitted. Anyway, in the end this kind of hair-splitting, per that great Times article on the communication failures in the early days of the pandemic, is appropriately indicative of how discourse can get bogged down in the details.

Yeah 'airborne transmission' doesn't mean that there's just a cloud of virus blowing around outside but I think most people have come round to the idea that spending prolonged periods of time indoors with someone is a risk, even if you're washing hands regularly.

IDK though, my wife was working opposite someone in the office who came down with covid a couple of days after the office closed - and was complaining about a sore throat even in the office - and she didn't get ill. So she was either asymptomatic or the virus just didn't reach her in that time.

It is truly amazing how you are drawing the exact opposite of the correct conclusion from any of this stuff. No shit that people are bogged down in the details, THAT is the point of the article, and you are example #1 with your endless ruminations about what exactly might airborne transmission mean. This hesitancy and deliberation and total unwillingness to take decisive action and make clear guidance because something cannot be proven to 100% certainty is getting people killed. When major public health orgs are unable to update their guidance for months, there's a downstream effect on public policy that just assumes the best and throws people out there without the precautions that are truly needed to stop this.

xp

Relax.

I didn't think there was anything remotely new or controversial about the idea that spending prolonged periods of time indoors with someone is a risk. That's why we avoid crowds and, well, spending prolonged periods of time indoors with someone. And we've been told that for months. The conclusion relayed by the Times article?

If airborne transmission is a significant factor in the pandemic, especially in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, the consequences for containment will be significant. Masks may be needed indoors, even in socially-distant settings. Health care workers may need N95 masks that filter out even the smallest respiratory droplets as they care for coronavirus patients.

Like, what's new or controversial about that? In my experience those are the guidelines I see being followed everywhere, at least by people taking this even remotely seriously, and it's not because it is or is not coming from the WHO.

"at least by people taking this even remotely seriously" doing a lot of work there. There is nothing new or controversial about it, but major health orgs, the federal government, and lots of state governments are unable to accept this and communicate it clearly and firmly. Trying to manage a public health crisis through the whims of personal responsibility doesn't work. The absence of a clear top down policy only leads to confusion and inconsistency, and the failure of public health orgs to come to grips with this has seriously exacerbated the problem.

You will get absolutely no argument with me about that. Maybe my misreading of the article was that the gist was not "here is some new and controversial thing, why doesn't the WHO get with it," but "here is a thing that everybody has thought for months that the WHO has yet to adopt." To which I say, well, yeah. But, for example, as far as I can tell my state is following those guidelines. You can't go inside anywhere without a mask, and I assume healthcare workers are using serious PPE. So they clearly managed to figure something out without the WHO. I mean, this whole scenario has highlighted failures of communication across the board, from the top down, which is not reassuring. But seeing so many come to the correct conclusion regardless has been slightly more reassuring.

I should also say that I suspect anyone not following those guidelines by now, or that are doing so in a half-assed way, are not citing the WHO as the basis of their decision, they just don't give a shit about public safety, their own or anyone else's.

I'm glad they managed to get it right where you live. Where I live, hospitals are at capacity.

I don't know if anyone knows exactly what is right, honestly. It's always what seems to be right right now, but who knows how things will look in 6 months. Where are you at?

josh in chicago may be an example of someone gaslighting themselves.

I think mask wearing might be right. Would it be so bad for public health orgs and governments to say if your infection rate is over X you must wear a mask? Or fo we need to study it further before taking that step?

I live in Austin, Texas, home of the highest positivity rate in the country.

xpost lol

I'm suggesting that at this point anyone claiming you don't need to wear a mask won't be convinced by the world health organization, or anyone else for that matter.

Like, this discussion, argument, debate, me gaslighting myself, I get serious déjà vu, because I thought everybody, myself included in some cases, moved beyond this "masks? y/n?" a couple of months ago.

Illinois seems to be one of the few states doing OK, which I've seen attributed to the state having a good public health leader in Dr. Ngozi Ezike, and the governor at the least following that guidance.

So instead of top-down guidance from the CDC or WHO, it's probably more about having a state government that's funded enough to hire and maintain actual expertise in-house, and then to have someone semi-competent in charge that actually listens to them.

So it's kind of down to Illinois having Chicago, which has both the population density and need for those services because the other 90% of the state is pretty sparse.

So, I understand why Josh, being a resident of the city of Chicago, would gloat over our covid-infected mortuaries